I’m starting to lean more towards death/doom as I get older. Perhaps it’s because bears are becoming more opportunistic with age. That means chasing prey is basically off the table for us. We’d rather look for something already dead somewhere in the deep forest. Death/doom is exactly what you’d expect from that kind of music. I don’t have to chase it; it’s also not something trying to get away from me. I can just watch it slowly perish. The difference is in what state I find my prey. Is it a fresh corpse, still clinging to life, or has it already been reduced to a decomposed cadaver crawling with maggots? It is no secret that this particular bear prefers the latter. Void Witch, however, caught me at a particularly hungry stage, so I’m willing to hear their last pleas.
Horripilating Presence is a melancholy monster. Maybe not for seasoned sad-doom fans, but for me it definitely sits on that side of the death/doom spectrum. Void Witch know how to build a brooding atmosphere, which is propped by the great melodic work by both guitarists. They are often switching from a crawl to a light jog; unfortunately their success rate at doing this seamlessly is not great. It’s the melancholic guitar craft that shows the most potential on this album and Void Witch needs to capitalize more on this.
The band claim to draw inspiration from many sources and it is evident in many places. There are strong melodic hints of swe-death across the album, sometimes in the form of At The Gates, sometimes touching old Opeth grounds. Halfway, I started to hear a strong Type O Negative influence, especially on “Malevolent Demiurge”. Sadly, the band decided it was a good idea to tear this quite interesting musical choice apart with sudden switches into an OSDM blast. Once it worked well, but three times is simply too much. And this pattern is applied to the whole album. Void Witch are not done with twisting my experience though. When listening carefully, I can find grunge-like, almost progressive traces all over the second half of the album. I didn’t mind these as they provide the much needed spice as sometimes I got the feeling the band is taking a break with the slow, awfully repetitive riffs.
Void Witch can obviously write very powerful and heavy material. When they play the atmospheric and melodic parts, pure melancholy seeps out of it and it is a great experience. They also have a knack for writing faster and more OSDM sounding material, especially when including the brilliant bass work by the singer/bassist Luke. Where Horripilating Presence clearly falls short, is combining these two parts. I would like to see the band focus on the purely sad doom part in the future, since those were definitely the highlight of this album.