Witch – Stryx Strygae Strygae

vote
7.5

• Band:
  WITCH
• Duration: 00:14:00
• Available from: 25/04/2025
• Label:

• Masked Dead Records

Streaming not yet available

The thick undergrowth of the local underground presents us with a new, intriguing reality, called witch, which collects – although incognito – also members of high -level formations such as the Devil and Darkend bridge.
“Stryx Strygae Strygae” is an EP of only three songs, for about fifteen minutes of duration: too little to formulate a truly exhaustive judgment on the future of this band, but more than enough to understand its potential and frame its sound coordinates.
Accompanied by a captivating graphic packaging, the witch's EP finds its sources of inspiration in the old Dark Fantasy – the most mysterious one, far from the lucid patina that pop culture has managed to give it in the last twenty years. It is a world populated by sinister creatures, arcane magic, rituals celebrated around fire in unknown languages, spoke only by demons and their followers.
The band is able to evoke this imagination and also an apparently stramba choice – that is, to invent an imaginary language, the angry angry, for the sung parts – becomes one of the strengths of the disc. It is the charm of the unknown, empty and devoid of complete meaning, that the listener's imagination can fill with different images, atmospheres and sensations for each of us. From a musical point of view, however, the witch opt for an effective formula, which collects the tradition of the classic metal of the 1980s and completes it with the acute black metal screaming.
The production is essential and the use of keyboards adds a further layer of mystery, perfectly in line with the atmosphere of the EP. Songwriting is of a good level and the band manages to mix its influences well, without these ever going to hinder each other.
It is true, for example, that the style of the band fishing with full hands since the eighties, but it does so by selecting carefully where the smell of sulfur is more pungent: the Iron Maiden of “The Number of the Beast”, King Diamond and his Mercyful Fate, Angel Witch and so on. In the same way, the choice of using the Black Metal item becomes sensible in a context that enhances sparse sounds, very far from the hyperproduction of contemporaneity. Of course, the risk is that this sometimes ends to muffle the more powerful and sharp passages a little, but it is an understandable and sensible compromise.
The three songs presented so far are all on the same level and homogeneous in style: a useful choice to immediately give a direction to the project, while being able to count on such a narrow minutage; We had to choose an example song, our choice would probably fall on titletrack, which of the three is that of the most sinister and evil cut, but the quality seems to us rather high in all the episodes published so far.
At this point we are curious to listen to a true full-length of the witch, which will be their real test. Can the choice of an invented language be cloying if multiplied by ten/twelve songs? Will the band be able to maintain a varied and constant songwriting?
These are questions that we hope will soon find a positive answer. For the moment, however, the business card of the witch has convinced us and their name has certainly entered the list of new formations to keep an eye on. Well so!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk0unhs5zr8