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ATTIC
Return Of The Witchfinder

Ván (2024)
Rating: 7.5/10

With their first album since 2017 sophomore effort Sanctimonious, Germany occult metallers Attic again plunder the darkest depths of Mercyful Fate and King Diamond for another round of Ouija board hokum. With a “new” guitarist in Max Povver who joined in 2017, the band continues its bewitching and spellbinding but all too familiar brand of Goth-infused devil rock.

Return Of The Witchfinder is certainly a heavy album. In fact, it is the band’s weightiest slab and it’s one that bristles with demonic glee. Obviously the King Diamond and Mercyful Fate comparisons will spring to mind, particularly in the vocal output of Meister Cagliostro, but Attic is still a driving heavy metal force and I’m glad they are back and dripping with occult menace.

‘Darkest Rites’ sends a spinal shiver with its bell chime followed by fiery, speeding guitar work and those eerie vocals which spiral into the black sky before plummeting back to an organic grizzle. ‘Hailstorm And Tempest’ emerges with less vim and pace, where instead the focus is on a spectral glide based around traditional axe fire and J.P.’s steady drum whacks. At their most melodious Attic concoct the mystical waft of ‘The Thief’s Candle’ with its steely, worming solo, while the title cut dredges up more King Diamond energy like some black magician conjuring evil spirits.

In spite of the quality musicianship on offer here, Attic will forever be seen as a King Diamond mimic, and with the band being away for so long I thought that they might have constructed something a little less familiar, because even with all the theatrics Return Of The Witchfinder is hellish homage which prompts me to slap on Mercyful Fate’s 1984 Don’t Break The Oath opus instead.

Even with the crisp melodies of ‘The Baleful Baron’ or the haunting zip of ‘Offerings To Baalberith’, the album lacks identity but in contrast provides dollops of atmosphere that creeps along your hallway to the echo of creaking floorboards. One will naturally be moved by that nostalgic air of a time when heavy metal was genuinely sinister, but in a world of saturated Satanism and diluted devilry, Attic’s latest platter delivers quite a punch although the bruises don’t last. Certainly fun while it lasts, Return Of The Witchfinder is more hocus-pocus than harum-scarum.

Neil Arnold

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