On the second installment of the ongoing collaboration between Seattle’s premier funeral doomers and Portland’s acoustic folkster, we’re treated to another hour-long slab of slow, engrossing metal and haunted vocals.
Release date: November 14, 2025 | Profound Lore | Aerial Ruin: Instagram | Facebook | Bell Witch: Instagram | Facebook | Bandcamp
Even in the IP era which we currently live, it’s become less of a safe bet to plan out a franchise in advance. People have become pickier with their time and money, and a recognizable name is no longer going to bring in audiences in droves – The Strangers (2008) was hardly a horror movie classic, yet three sequels have been shot concurrently and the two released so far have seen less financial and critical success with each one. Thankfully, in the music world, such brazen presumption is less common; one would have to point to the obvious examples, such as Green Day‘s increasingly awful 2012 album trilogy Uno/Dos/Tre, to discourage any artist from putting the cart before the horse so carelessly. Take your time, let it gestate, and make damn sure the ideas are good enough to come back to later. In the case of this much-vaunted team-up between two-man doom metal act Bell Witch, and Aerial Ruin, the solo project of guitarist/singer Erik Moggridge, the pre-planned series lands successfully and with purpose.
Bell Witch – formed by six-string bass wielder/vocalist Dylan Desmond and drummer/vocalist Adrian Guerra – released the well-regarded Longing in 2012 and Four Phantoms in 2015, providing listeners with an especially slow and stark take on funeral doom that endeared the band to fans of the style. Guerra left after the release of Four Phantoms citing health concerns and tragically died the following year at the age of 36. With Jesse Shreibman now behind the drum kit, Bell Witch paid tribute to Guerra with 2017’s Mirror Reaper, which pushed the band’s sound even further in searing, overwhelming directions – its one-song, 83-minute structure became a talking point in the metal community, as were the posthumous vocals of Guerra that the band utilized in its second half. Providing additional singing was none other than Erik Moggridge, who by this point had released several acoustic folk albums of his own (an acclaimed split with Panopticon would follow in 2020).
When these two vastly different artists released Stygian Bough: Volume I in 2020, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Maybe the lockdowns of that year made me crave something faster and to the point, but the mournful mix of doom and folk wasn’t the musical experience I was looking for. Upon returning to it a couple years later, I found it to be a fresh, engaging listen. Moggridge’s guitar added a dimension to Bell Witch‘s sound that felt complementary rather than tacked-on, and his vocals provided a nice counterpoint as well. Most of all, it provided a sound distinct from either act’s solo output, and after giving it another chance, I was reminded it was only the first installment. Would Part Two materialize eventually, unlike other intriguing joint efforts that haven’t made it past Part One (here’s looking at you, Converge and Chelsea Wolfe; I want a Bloodmoon: II, daggummit)?
With Bell Witch having concurrently started ANOTHER multi-album project with Future’s Shadow Part 1: The Clandestine Gate in 2023, it was only a matter of time before they partnered with Aerial Ruin again, and like an old friend you haven’t seen in a few years, they return here sounding revitalized and ready to explore new ideas. Just peep the guitar shredding toward the end of album closer “The Told and the Leadened” – uncommon for either act, but in context it provides necessary relief to the tension built up over the song’s preceding 14 minutes. In what appears to be the song’s final moments, Shreibman’s tribal drumming pairs excellently with ringing guitar feedback…before the distortion flares up again and the album ends on an honest-to-God rock n’ roll coda of wild soloing from all three musicians. What doom metal group would dare to do such a thing after nearly an hour of forlorn trudging through a desolate hellscape? It’s little touches like these that give Stygian Bough: Volume II an identifiable personality: serious, to be sure, but unafraid to open up and have some fun with the formula.
First single “Waves Became the Sky” provides a healthy helping of mournful croons from Moggridge, whose voice, ever soft and weary, weaves a surprisingly catchy melody over the lugubrious instrumental. Its 12 minutes go by in a flash, proving that Bell Witch & Aerial Ruin understand the most technical matter of all in this notoriously slow style: pacing. The song almost follows a traditional verse-chorus-verse structure, something made clear by the musicians as the album released. For an album with four songs that total an hour in total, the songs don’t drag; they move, even during their quietest, most deliberate sections. The mostly acoustic “From Dominion” exemplifies this best, spending nearly half its 10 minutes accumulating its mood via cymbal washes and timpani rolls before exploding into a dirge that manages to be both uplifting and suffocating at the same time.
“King of the Wood” features an extended doomy intro with some of the best riffs on the album – sinister, atmospheric, and crunching all at once – for its first 90 seconds, before Moggridge enters with a story about ‘blank pages, when opened the fallacy bleeding you out‘ accompanied only with his guitar and Shreibman’s organ in the background. For the next 90 seconds, they keep things hushed and still, allowing the listener to soak in the sounds and singing completely unfettered. When the band lurches forward in full, it feels like a natural progression through a fully realized world, battle-scarred and grim. Even the song’s drawn-out middle section, featuring no more than some bass plucking and synth effects, feels essential to the emotional core that these three men have created. When Moggridge re-enters with lines like ‘cast pages over the gravity welcoming home/blank cages recover the aeonic bricktop’ (at least I think; lyrics are nowhere to be found for any of these songs online, not even on their Bandcamp), the surreal, nightmare-like soundscape is on full display. It is further augmented by the brutal guitar lines and energetic drumming that follows, concluding the song in spectacularly morose fashion.
If anything, the band that comes to mind while listening to Stygian Bough: Volume II are British cult favorites Warning: the soaring, emotive singing and melodic funereal metal would make Bell Witch & Aerial Ruin a natural successor to their throne if they hadn’t announced a new album earlier this year. A double-bill (or would it be triple-bill?) featuring all of these groups would make for an exquisite night of passionate funeral doom, the special kind which goes to a heart-wrenching place that reminds us all of our own fragility. Stygian Bough: Volume II features no harsh vocals, only sung – and that, in a way, is emblematic of its artistic intentions. To take the bedrock of metal and humanize it in this way is something that not many metal bands can do without sanitizing the material in an overly commercial manner; traditional pop structure, cleaned up singing, and overly treated growling, just to name a few cliches. With Stygian Bough: Volume II, Bell Witch & Aerial Ruin have taken the sound they presented on Volume I and improved upon it, giving the listener an idiosyncratic listening experience they won’t soon forget. My only fear is that Volume III will be another five years away; if so, I can’t wait to see how much more deeply I’ll be affected by it by then. Like a fine wine, these guys just get better with age.
