Witches Hollow – Grimoire

Witches Hollow is a band that I have been having a surprisingly hard time finding any real concrete information about. What I have been able to gather that was somewhat easily verifiable is the fact that the band is a Finnish one-man act, one that has been around at least since 2019 (where the multi-instrumentalist that makes up the entire roster released the bands first content, a Full-length entitled The Coven Is Alive), as well as the music seems to be heavily inspired by both Death and Black Metal; Hence a deliberately very crude and simplistic approach to the music that is also both heavily distorted and intentionally grainy, with matching growls to boot. This approach is found all throughout the seven tracks (and one interlude) that makes up the forty-six-odd minutes of playtime present upon their newest release, Grimoire, which hit store shelves late last year. 

Now, as a general rule I do love myself a one-man act (see my love for Cepheide, Sadness, ColdWorld and others), since the complete creative control ensures that there is no reason to compromise with the artists vision for their would-be-masterpiece (in this case the seven individual tracks and one interlude making up the album). The end result tends to be both clear-cut, deeply engrossed in whatever themes and musical styles the musician wants to convey and as a result often ends up being a concept album of sorts (another type of album that is both near and dear to my heart). 

The flipside of this, however, is that any musician is only as good as the vision they bring to the table, coupled with their mastery of their instruments. More musicians allow a band to have more talented artists working in unison to perfect their musical creation, amplifying one another and covering or even aiding eachother where needed. So while the vision itself might be the victim of compromise, the end result might end up being better simply due to the sheer higher level of combined talent on display – And sadly that is what Grimoire is an example of for me. 

While the individual aspects of the record is everything that I would expect to hear from a Black/Death Metal hybrid record, the music comes off as somewhat… Lackluster. Personally I fail to see any real direction on the album, both lyrically and musically that differs more than a desire to write and release an album ticking as many boxes as would be expected to be ticked off in one such album. 

That being said, the artist behind it is clearly not without talent – The interlude at the centre of the record showed promise and genuinely picqued my interest, despite, or in this case, perhaps due to,  its relative short length. 

Witches Hollow manages in what they set out to do, namely releasing yet another Black/Death Metal record. And while I will be the first to admit that I have never been particularly inclined towards this specific musical endeavour, it still came across as particularly lacking to me. Nevertheless, given some more time I can see some potential growing from it. I certainly will not be writing them off anytime soon. 

Recommended for fans of Krabathor. 

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