Review by UnhinderedbyTalent for Witch Vomit - Poisoned Blood (2017)
This is a filthy affair, full of nods to a variety of bands ranging from Incantation (predictably) to Morbid Angel yet never once slipping into just worship territory. The intensity of Witch Vomit's sound belies a spectrum of death metal styles in fact. With the guitars taking on the buzzsaw Swedish style, the vocals offering the cavernous depths of death doom and the sonics of the early 90's scene.
The band vary the pace well on this EP making the changes in tempo subtle yet noticable, well-timed yet still interesting. It is encouraging to find a band not afraid to do intro tracks and use horrific sounding atmospheres to sensible effect without overstating such content and making it centre stage. This is all about the music folks with the band not afraid to drop in some d-beat/punk drumming when needed to realty get the impact levels up.
With the explosion of OSDM bands in recent years, Witch Vomit don't hide their influences but don't just copy them either and as mentioned the variety here is what holds the attention whilst still being able to maintain that really nasty edge to the ploughing chops of the riffs and the guttural grief of the vocals. In a way, even for an EP, it is over too soon but I sense that in a full length offering my attention span wouldn't compliment the effort quite so well and I imagine would need a couple of sittings per full album spin to digest better.
As a short, sharp shock of dirty and repugnant death metal this floats my boat no end. As a band who seem to follow a format of EP followed by a full length I feel there's more to come here that I will find appealing and will build up nicely my repertoire quick fix death metal hopefully for years to come.