As you get older, the idea of your own demise comes a little closer in the front view than most might find comfortable. That’s if you live a long life into old age. But that shit can come for you at any time, any place, any situation, and dealing with a brush with death or someone else’s is enough to wreak havoc on your own mentality.
Canadian black metal force Witherer pack all of that trauma and catharsis into “Shadow Without a Horizon,” their debut full-length. The band itself—Tiamoath (vocals, guitars, bass, songwriting, keyboards, bells), Øhrracle (vocals, guitars), Hex Visceræ (drums)—experienced health issues and too-close-for-comfort scrapes with death, and that’s packed into these five tracks and 53 minutes of torment. Black metal remains their base, but there is a lot of slow-burning doom cooked into this thing, and if you feel like the music is making you dizzy and disoriented, you’re not alone. This is punishing mentally and physically, an album that sees its horrors to the end.
“Fiat Umbra (Burial Beneath the Stalactites)” opens basking in darkness, a long introspection melting into warped heat, growls mauling as the guitars boil. Feral calls rip as the vibe grows weird and trudging, calls marring as doom elements grow thicker and stickier, whispers confounding before eeriness peaks, psychosis melting as spiraling playing stabs the senses. Guitars flex again, the growls corrode, and bizarre power blurs before fading. “Devourer of All Graveyards” attacks, howls snarling, guitars angling and cutting into your muscles. Smoke rises as the tempo slows, remaining just as heavy but slightly tricky. Guest vocalist M. Adem lends her pipes by adding wordless calls, and then clean singing bellows, growls smear, and an ugly, deranged assault spirals and stings before disappearing into dust. “The Wailing Hours (Plummeting Under the Tunnels)” is an instrumental with sounds hovering, dank guitars echoing, and the feeling of being stuck in a basement isolating you.
“Solar Collapse Mandala” has cries pulling at flesh and a hammering pace, guitars gripping as the growls crush, the playing veering toward hypnosis. It feels like a drug haze dream as the pressure turns into strange colors, the momentum mounts, and the delirious melodies pin you to the earth. Guitars bloody as a final gasp attacks, trucking and sprawling to the end. Closer “Praises (Gliding Through the Lightless Sea)” is the longest track, running 15:30, and the echoey slurriness permeates, howls doing damage, the bass slinking into the unknown. Growls sicken as the mesmerizing playing angles toward chaos, the heat rising as the band slowly batters, the bass again flexing hard. The vocals gurgle as the guitars melt, going off into sooty tension, mixing into a mystical soundscape. A last detonation arrives, bringing animalistic damage, sounds whirring, and the last strains of words mixing into echoes.
Brushes with one’s demise obviously can make a significant impact on you mentally, and that reality is all over “Shadow Without a Horizon,” one hell of a weighty debut record for Witherer. These are universal themes, and while it might not always (or ever) feel good to face these forces, they cannot be avoided, so confronting them can build strength. This album doesn’t exactly go down easily, nor was it intended to, and each experience with these five songs can leave anyone bruised, vulnerable, band, perhaps, enlightened.
For more on the band, go here: https://withererblackmetal.bandcamp.com/
To buy the album, go here: https://hypaethralrecords.com/collections/witherer
For more on the label, go here: https://hypaethralrecords.com/
Meat Mead Metal 