Reviews list for Bell Witch - Four Phantoms (2015)

A masterclass in contemporary Funeral Doom - crushing, suffocating riffs relieved by heavenly, ethereal moments of beauty.

"Four Phantoms" is an extraordinary, challenging and thought provoking listen. To start with Bell Witch are not a stereotypical metal band. The two members use only bass and drums as their preferred weapons of choice. The bass is a six string affair so the capacity for some very heavy and harrowing riffs and leads is explored fully by Dylan Desmond.

The 4 tracks flow effortlessly between crushing heaviness and melancholic melodies. The hour of your attention that it demands takes you to dark places as it explores four violent deaths at the hand of nature. Drowning, suffocation, immolation and an endless fall for all eternity (water, earth, fire and wind) are all looked at on each track. Opening track "Suffocation, A Burial: I - Awoken (Breathing Teeth)" starts with a slow picked bass until a huge crash of percussion and bass kick things off properly. The mixture of vocals between hushed growls, ethereal and choral vocals is a clever balance. For all the time the growls are present you feel a real sense of a very deep anger and the cleaner styles encase that anger in an unbearable sorrow. Couple them with the excellent use of bass to create mournful, atmospheric passages that tell their own story, layered in a dark ambiance. By the time you have endured the full 22 minutes of track one you realise it isn't just the opening track, it is the opening ritual to what is to come.

The bass churns out some real harrowing bottom end riffs during track two "Judgement, In Fire:I - Garden (of Blooming Ash)". The fire here is a slow burning, huge yet somehow concentrated pyre. A perfectly measured delivery occurs during "Suffocation, A Drowning: II - Somniloquy (The Distance Of Forever)" as the bass sings like a wounded, horned beast whilst the vocals remain clean and almost folk like.

By the time you reach the end of "Judgement, In Air:II Felled (In Howling Wind)" there is very much the sense of having gone through a journey. Like you have been invited on a road trip that you knew was going to be horrific and draining but for every last minute of it you couldn't tear your eyes away from the road ahead and never at any point did you truly want it to be over. As the album closes it sounds like darkness folding in on itself, teasing you by holding your hand until the last possible moment before it casts you free