WITCHERY — Restless & Dead (review)

WITCHERY — Restless & Dead album cover Album · 1998 · Thrash Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
UMUR
"Restless & Dead" is the debut full-length studio album by Swedish metal act Witchery. The album was released through Necropolis Records in October 1998. Witchery was formed in 1997 by four former members of Satanic Slaughter and bassist Sharlee D'Angelo (Mercyful Fate, Arch Enemy).

The music on "Restless & Dead" is heavy metal with elements of death, black, and thrash metal, making it a bit hard to tag correctly. Maybe an extreme form of traditional heavy metal is the most valid description. The instrumental part of the music isn´t that extreme though, and only occasionally touches old school sounding thrash and speed metal territories. It´s mostly grounded in traditional heavy metal with hard edged riffing, melodic solos, and pounding drums, but generally featuring a slightly darker/occult atmosphere than most releases in the genre. Song titles like "Midnight at the Graveyard", "Awaiting the Exorcist", and "House of the Raining Blood" speak louder than words when it comes to the lyrical content. The vocals are relatively extreme, and is best described as a screaming yet intelligible blackened growl.

The material on the 10 track, 35:44 minutes long album is well composed, but also slightly formulaic and it doesn´t take more than a couple of tracks, before you know how the rest of the album is gonna sound like. It´s not a huge issue since the album is very well produced and the musicianship is on a high level, but the lack of compositional surprises do make the album slightly less interesting than it could have been. Still there are some high quality material on the album, featuring catchy hooks and memorable riffs, and therefore a 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.
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