{"id":74624,"date":"2018-11-23T00:00:05","date_gmt":"2018-11-23T00:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=74624"},"modified":"2018-12-04T17:37:36","modified_gmt":"2018-12-04T17:37:36","slug":"album-review-witchthroat-serpent-swallow-the-venom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/album-review-witchthroat-serpent-swallow-the-venom\/","title":{"rendered":"WITCHTHROAT SERPENT – Swallow The Venom (2018) | Album \/ EP Reviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

WITCHTHROAT SERPENT
Swallow The Venom<\/strong><\/span>
\n\"\"
\nSvart (2018)<\/span>
Rating: 5\/10<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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I still don\u2019t know where I fully stand with regards to Witchthroat Serpent and the myriad of other Electric Wizard-cum-stoner \/ occult bands with their \u201cnostalgic\u201d album covers and horror-fused misery. Maybe I\u2019m just an old fashioned purist who still gets high on authentic doom metal. But unfortunately I find so much of this sort of \u201cnew\u201d stuff derivative, because although well packaged the sounds within rarely move me.<\/p>\n

Swallow The Venom<\/em> is the third slab from the French trio and kicks off with \u2018Feu Sacre\u0301\u2019, a short suspenseful introduction of eerie female chanting straight out of a Jean Rollin vampire movie.<\/p>\n

Then we\u2019re into the quicksand monolith of the seven-minute \u2018Lucifer\u2019s Fire\u2019, a rather predictably lumbering fuzzed up occult drug-fest built upon highly fluffed rolling riffs and the epic calls of Fredrik Bolzann \u2013 although for me his cries, although mournful, are somewhat as unremarkable as the weighty groove. And that just about sums up Witchthroat Serpent and a whole host of \u201cscene\u201d followers; the music often rather uneventful in its boulder-like shifts resulting in overlong heaps of the morose which flirt with psychedelia and slo-mo banality.<\/p>\n

\u2018Pauper\u2019s Grave\u2019 is a slow-moving slug of a track aimed at wizards and warlocks who still think it\u2019s hip to drink beer that tastes like gravy. I can\u2019t argue with the weight, but I\u2019ll squabble all day long with regards to the absolutely bland direction this trio takes. Or maybe I\u2019ve just not smoked enough weed in my time to appreciate this drab, dreary and one dimensional snail trail.<\/p>\n

Yeah, the band does throw in flecks of subtlety, an emotive injection every now and then to create atmosphere, but it\u2019s all just so darn boring in its cumbersome manner. \u2018The Might Of The Unfailing Source\u2019 is despondent in its riff. Indeed, how can anyone get high on such a dirge of dullness?<\/p>\n

Witchthroat Serpent, from their daft moniker to their routine sound, are the ordinary boys of a genre bursting with sound-alikes; eager beavers of the sludge-lord rising revelling in down tuned fuzz wafting of Electric Wizard-isms. But very soon it all begins to melt into one great blubbery mess bereft of identity whereby the drummer seems to be prodding between power naps, and just like the last watery opus Sang-Dragon<\/em> (2016), Swallow The Venom<\/em> pretty much buries the bass in its crusade for mid-paced regularity.<\/p>\n

\u2018Scorpent Serpion\u2019 trudges in tired fashion, while \u2018Hunt For The Mountebank\u2019 tiredly slips straight out of fashion and for me the vocals just become a grate on the grey matter; cries of woe that bore me to tears as another tidal wave of fuzzed riffage sweeps into the ears like hot spoons of treacle.<\/p>\n

According to the press release for this album, \u201cWitchthroat Serpent have expanded their weaponry and truly mastered their art\u201d, but there was no art to master such is the one-dimensional glumness of \u2018Red Eyed Albino\u2019 and route-one persistence of \u2018No More Giant Octopuses\u2019. But silly song titles aside, this is an album that goes nowhere fast. Although I\u2019m sure some fans will argue that\u2019s its point, which in turn then makes it a rather pointless and derivative entry in the annals of the ever-annoying stoner-cum-doom self-indulgence.<\/p>\n

Neil Arnold<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WITCHTHROAT SERPENTSwallow The Venom Svart (2018)Rating: 5\/10 I still don\u2019t know where I fully stand with regards to Witchthroat Serpent and the myriad of other Electric Wizard-cum-stoner \/ occult bands with their \u201cnostalgic\u201d album covers and horror-fused misery. Maybe I\u2019m just an old fashioned purist who still gets high on authentic doom metal. But unfortunately […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,4236],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-ep-reviews","category-witchthroat-serpent"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74624"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74625,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74624\/revisions\/74625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}