Witchrist-Beheaded Ouroboros

Invictus
2011

Witchrist hail from Auckland, New Zealand and play an explosively brutal style of black tinged death metal. There are some sitar and church bells thrown in largely in a few songs, but other than those this is a stripped down approach. They create some excessively heavy riffs with a great deal of depth. They control the speed rather than it controlling them which so often happens with some death metal bands. They aren't afraid to slow the pace down as well. When they do slow down they still maintain their intensity and in fact these parts were the ones that impressed me the most. It showed the band had the skills to do more than one trick. The first few tracks seemed stuck in one speed, but eventually they opened up and showed that expertise stretched beyond one idea. The vocals are typical of the style, but they are consistant. The rhythm section helps support the overall sound and they offer up a good selection of beats. The guitar riffs were what impressed me most as they kept pushing themselves to do more and went past my expectations. The foundation for this type of music is based in early death metal, but Witchrist are not content to merely copy. They instead take that seed and push the level of aggression up a notch or two while maintaining a strong focus on creating powerful songs. I get the impresison they could do even more if they keep heading in the direction they have created here. A fine showing indeed.