In May, Swedish thrash demons Witchery revealed that they have a new album on the way, and dropped the unbelievably rad first single “Popecrusher.” Now, the band have released another new single, titled “Witching Hour,” and damn, does it fucking rule.
Now, just a heads up: “Witching Hour” is NOT a cover of the Venom track of the same name, which is unfortunate, because Witchery covering that song would be baller as hell. That said, the track is so awesome that we don’t really care; it’s packed to the gills with blazing guitars and vicious snarls about witches, witchcraft, and the hour at which all that shit comes together.
Says guitarist Patrick Jensen:
“And so, the ‘Witching Hour’ has finally arrived…This, the opening track of the new concept album Nightside, kicks off a story of unreal nightmares, demonic possession, inquisitional witches’ trials and then dives into the really dark stuff, haha. First try for us to create a concept album and we are very happy with how it turned out. We worked hard at creating songs that followed the dramaturgy of the story (which was more work than we ever realized, but a challenged we accepted and overcame!). We’re pretty sure that ‘Popecrusher’, and now ‘Witching Hour’, will pique your interest in hearing the full story of Nightside!”
As for the band’s new album Nightside, Jensen says:
“I started to write this album without any general direction of idea in mind, but somewhere in the middle of the writing process I remembered that I’ve always wanted to do a concept album, so I decided to give it a shot. Little did I know that writing a concept album puts a lot more pressure on each and every song turning out great. This might seem a norm (and I guess it is in some way) but usually you write 12-14 songs and choose the songs that turned out the best after they’ve been mixed and mastered. Sometimes even what you thought was going to be the first song on the album gets pushed to somewhere else because another track turned out sounding more like an opening track. Also, out of those 12-14 songs you can choose to keep a few a bonus tracks. With a theme album, songs can’t swap places. The story needs to work (no one wants to do a new “The Elder”!), so the opening track really needs to hold up as an opening track etc., thus the extra pressure of “no surprises” after its all recorded. The album tells a story of demonic nightmares, unexplainable pregnancy, witch trails and an escape from the Old Country to the colonies in the west and what happens once the child is born. Guests on this album is, for starters, our permanent guest of honor Hank Shermann, but also guest solos by Maciek Ofstad of Kvelertak and Simon Johansson of Wolf (also the studio owner of SolnaStudio where we recorded the album. We also had the honor of having Jeff Walker of Carcass do guest vocals on the song “A Forest of Burning Coffins”. All in all, we are very happy with how the album turned out and with again thrilled over Daniel Bergstrand’s killer production…”
Check out “Witching Hour” below, then scroll down for album details. Witchery’s Nightside drops July 22nd via Century Media and is available for preorder.
Witchery’s Nightside:
- Witching Hour
- Don’t Burn the Witch
- Storm of the Unborn
- Er steht in Flammen
- Popecrusher
- Left Hand March
- Under the Altar
- Churchburner
- Crucifix and Candle
- A Forest of Burning Coffins
- Nightside
