Symphony for the Devil

Hot on the heels of The Haunted comes another Swedish band labelled as thrash when really they have a lot more in common with bands that come from Gothenburg as opposed to bands that come from San Francisco. It's not all bad though as this album does contain the odd bit of gold that prevents it from becoming a coaster and not surprisingly it's the moments when the band find themselves atleast attempting to thrash it up.

Things start off rather positively as the savage as fuck opener The Storm. Fast, heavy and evil this song is a balltearer, the worst thing about it is that it really gets your hopes up that the rest of the album will be this impressive. Other tracks of note include the solid thrasher Wicked while Unholy Wars is certainly tolerable but the real highlight here would be the instrumental Bone Mill. It's not that the vocals are that terrible (they are your typical if a tad generic harsh gothenburg stlye) instead this is where the band sound their most focused on doing nothing but ripping a hole in your nutsack. A vicious riff-fest from start to finish, if the whole album had sounded like this we would have a near masterpiece on our hands.

Unfortunatley though neither we nor Witchery are that lucky as the band apparently decided that just a handful of solid, though at times spectacular thrash numbers was enough. As a result the rest of the album deteriorates into little more than standard mediocre Euro-style melodic death with the odd death 'n' roll moment (such as the track None Buried Deeper...) that sounds like a Carcass reject from the Heartwork sessions.

While this is still miles better than most of the efforts from your average Gothenburg or metalcore act it still lacks the consistency to make a truly significant impact, while the overly slick production and the lack of truly memorable solos doesn't help the band's cause either. If anything this album is proof that Witchery have the the ability to a killer tune, however the real question now is whether they have the ability to write enough in order to create a truly killer album.