Apocalyptic Witchcraft / Makrokosmos

Witchcraft is fun and so is the apocalypse. Darn all these pesky humans, darn these pesky animals, plants and of course and all the pesky physics. Yeah, end it all ... it is so much fun, once it is over of course, but currently there still remains all these pesky enduring things we still have not got rid off. So, why not celebrate the prospect with a cheerful song. Let us have fun. Happy black metal so to speak. No more black and white corpse paint! No, now we go all for full (frontal) colour. Let us take a dive into the possibilities of colour variations. ... we are drifting off aren't we?

Anyway, Petrychor's release differs not so much in style and sound from what they have offered before, as in overall intention and conception. All sounds comparably happy. This sounds cheerful. Cursing people and to bring eternal damnation upon them is so much fun. Already in the first minutes of this release you can feel it. Happy. Happy. Happy. Let us all damn them and be happy. Oh so happy. Someone familiar with Terry Pratchet and those witches? What a merry bunch.

Not only the opening breathes this happy vibe, also some of the riffs of the lead guitar come over as happy. So unmistakably happy. This aspect marks a deviation from what the band had done before. While the conceptual separation of various types and levels of intensity still has its place in the approach of Petrychor, the sound or rather rather its tone has changed on this recording. It has something playful to it. Furthermore, in terms of the atmosphere and style it breathes rather easy and is not drowned by some type of grim and frostbitten darkness. The music opens in a lofty easy-going fashion, proceed in some well-known type of black metal blast, only to fill the break in the middle of the track in a rather lofty kind of fashion, but actually manages somehow to sneak some of this attitude into the overall vibe of the song as well. Thus and despite the general idea of playing intense and multi-layered black metal, Apocalyptic Witchcraft proceeds not in an overtly predictable kind of way. It is this switch in tone and its effect that leaves the listener not only fascinated but also intrigued about the performance of the band. How does this ep fare with what had been offered before and what will come next? Is this approach an exception or will it be the rule? Well, considering the issues on the previous releases and how these were unable to convince on a broader scale -- they lack the proper balancing and middle ground in terms of the concept --, this one, this ep that is, is at least able to point into a direction in which an evolution and progression which comes over as a vital alternative. A path out of the narrowly defined set of rules.

What can be criticised is the lack of length of this release. Yeah, it is only a ep and it is over 26 minutes in length, but it would have been nice to experience more of this daringness that has found its way in this recording. Nevertheless, one has to admire and point to the evolution since the prior releases and how the experimentation on either of these appears to come rather "full circle" in this one.

The next output could or might or should definitely be something to look out for.

Atmospheric black metal is doing great these days. We have labels like Vordvis, Eisenwald, Wolfspell and more that find some new and interesting projects from that sort of music. It just became impossible to be able to get everything that would seem interesting, so many fine releases are out there nowadays. But we can only try. And in this review I wanna recommend you a completely unknown project from USA that may interest you also, if you’re fan of atmospheric black metal. This project is called Petrychor and to be honest, first time I’ve heard of it was when I got the CD called “Apocalyptic Witchcraft / Makrokosmos”. I still don’t know much about its history, I don’t know nothing about the guy who stands behind this project. Digipak is rather poor with information, although it does unveil a bit of detail about the concept for these two recordings (concept, which is strongly bond with nature, earth and cosmos). And yes, two recordings, because this release is like a compilation with two separate releases of Petrychor (“Apocalyptic Witchcraft” from 2015 and “Makrokosmos” from 2014).

“Apocalyptic Witchcraft” is just one, a but 25 minute long song. And I have to say I love it, and when compared to “Makrokosmos”, I can definitely say that on this EP everything sounds just better. The music is so well performed and composed, very intelligent and captivating, with a great diversity and combination of folky acoustic stuff with atmospheric black metal. This song can go into two completely opposite directions – from melancholic, sorrowful stuff, with beautiful acoustic passages to fast, harsh black metal; progressive at times and always very atmospheric and dark. It’s balanced properly, never becoming boring or overlong, which is always a risk if you decide to compose a 25 minutes long song. Petrychor did very well here, each part of this song brings another great motif and the whole piece is quite easily listenable. I also like how it’s been arranged, how Petrychor uses keyboards, guitar melodies, acoustic and everything else. Sometimes it has even that post (black) metal feeling, which is cool also, reminding me of Panopticon’s recent album.

Will I surprise you if I say that I like the quiet and less aggressive moments the most? Especially, when towards the end the music becomes hypnotizing with the post metal feeling and then it’s followed with a beautiful acoustic piece. Damn, it sounds mesmerizing. The production is also quite nice, it’s clean and good for this sort of music. I have no idea if there are programmed drums, but they do sound very well as well. So, you can see that I’m very positive towards “Apocalyptic Witchcraft” and this song surely deserves attention.

And as for “Makrokosmos”, well I have to say that this album – with four songs – is not quite as good as the recent EP. Still good but I enjoyed the newer EP more. First what I can say about ”Makrokosmos” is that the production is much harsher and it could have been a bit better. Secondly, the musical style is different and I like the style from “Apocalyptic Witchcraft” more. Don’t get me wrong. There are also some stunning and captivating fragments, here and there you can really feel that this dude behind Petrychor is very talented. Listen to “Ceaseless White” and how for example he incorporates violin into fast and raw sounding black metal! That’s not just exceptional, but it sounds fantastic. Weird, yes, but damn good also. ”Planets Born of Human Ashes” is another worth mentioning piece here, a very long song, filled with dissonant and post metallish playing. With songs like this you can tell that “Apocalyptic Witchcraft” was much more black metal focused, while “Makrokosmos” is different, more post metal / ambient stuff (“Cosmic Irrelevance Does Not Suggest Terrestrial Insignificance”). Generally the second part of this CD is more difficult to get into, but personally once I managed to do so, I just liked it as well.

So, what else can I say? Nothing more is needed, I guess. Petrychor is very interesting, in my opinion. “Apocalyptic Witchcraft” is fantastic atmospheric black metal, “Makrokosmos” is great post (black) metal / ambient stuff. I am quite surprised with this CD, as it’s not necessarily the usual Wolfspell Records type of release, but I am not gonna moan that this label decided to release something different, if it’s that bloody good. Recommended again, digipak is limited to 500 copies only.

Standout tracks: “Apocalyptic Witchcraft”, ”Planets Born of Human Ashes”
Final rate: 70/100

Long time no hear anything by Petrychor until I came across this recent EP which was inspired by the book of the same name by Peter Grey on practising and living witchcraft. This one-track recording is a highly impassioned soundtrack aimed at enhancing the practice of meditation and ritual to help connect listeners to nature and balance the needs of body and mind for space in a world where we are constantly exposed to and worn down by influences more malign than benign. This EP reminds us that however alienated we may feel, however hopeless and desperate life seems to be, we are not alone in feeling this way and knowing that others feel the same as we do can be reassuring in itself.

It's a mix of immersive raw black metal wall-of-sound roar, folk and symphonic post-metal elements, all full-tilt aggression yet never sounding overwhelming in its contrasting textures of clean-toned lead guitar, thrumming rhythms, urgent riffs and some of the most beautiful, heart-warming and glorious melodies a post-metal recording could possibly have. While the EP weaves in and out of the poles of acoustic folk and raw BM, with weeping post-metal melody and trancey psychedelic ambience connecting the two extremes, the music never comes across as confused or meandering - it is always focused on its goal. The contrast between the folk music and BM as the recording progresses, highlighted by a clear and sharp production, has the effect not only of focusing listener attention on the differences between the two but drawing the genres together into a yin-yang duality that is tight and energised by the contrast.

For such a long piece, this work grows in intensity and exhilaration and past the halfway mark you really feel as if you've been elevated to another, higher plane of existence and glory. Petrychor keeps on adding little flourishes and riffs and melodies that are positively glowing and spiritually inspiring. Long feedback drones overhead envelop you in a bright radiant universe where folk guitar, thumping drums, china-doll effects and banshee wail co-exist and bring you to transcendence. After hearing this music, you'll feel refreshed and energised to take on the world, no matter how much or how high the level of crap it piles on you.

You know you have a secret weapon for when you need rest and recovery from being assaulted psychologically and spiritually by forces of evil abroad in the world.

Tad Piecka is a productive guy. He's the bass player of post-rock group Beware of Safety, he has an acoustic folk solo project under his own name, and he also has a solo electronic project (Tremolite) and a solo ambient project (Carbonscape). And, of course, there's Petrychor.

The latest Petrychor EP, Apocalyptic Witchcraft, released without fanfare on Samhain 2015, is in many ways the logical progression of everything Piecka has ever recorded. I'm not just talking about his work as Petrychor, although this does incorporate nearly every influence heard on previous Petrychor recordings (the krautrock influence from Makrokosmos is subdued here if it's present at all). In addition to being black metal, there is unmistakable post-rock influence throughout this track to an extent never before felt in Petrychor's music; the fingerstyle acoustic guitar playing he doesn't get nearly enough credit for under his real name shows up in several of the acoustic passages here; there's even a lot of electronic wizardry buried under this album's wall-of-sound production. It also feels like Petrychor's previous releases have been practice for this one. They were all great in their own right, but this takes everything they had been building towards and takes it to the next level.

The simple fact is that Piecka has ascended to a new level in his art. Part of this is just because the canvas he's painting on is larger here - none of his previous releases allowed songs to stretch much past the fourteen-minute mark. None of the twenty-six-plus minutes of this song is wasted; it's truly progressive in the best sense of the word, where every moment builds naturally on what has come before it in the song. There's an almost inevitable acoustic/black metal/acoustic/black metal/acoustic progression to the song, but it doesn't feel forced or shoehorned in; it feels like the only logical way this song could have come out. The songwriting has taken a leap beyond the already high standard found on Petrychor's previous releases; every note feels perfectly placed. The performances are up to Piecka's usual high standard; the acoustic guitar is the obvious highlight but all the instruments are performed well. The production is great for this kind of material; the wall of sound found on Petrychor's previous releases is still present, but like with Effigies and Epitaphs, on a good pair of headphones you can clearly make out every instrument. The drums are probably still a drum synth, but it's a well-used one if so; there's a lot of variation to the patterns and it doesn't feel like the same sound blasted ad nauseam like it does with many black metal drum synths. The mix is pretty loud in the metal sections, but not deafeningly so, and Piecka took care to avoid clipping it during the mastering phase, meaning that you can put this on repeat without getting listener fatigue.

And you will undoubtedly have the urge to put this on repeat if you're anything like me. I've been listening to metal for almost twenty years and this has quickly jumped into my top ten metal tracks of all time. I always knew Piecka had the potential to be a truly genre-defining artist from the moment I first heard Dryad, and this release proves it. He's worked black metal, shoegaze, post-rock, electronica, dark ambient, folk, progressive rock, and any number of other disparate genres into a truly unique and rewarding whole. Other people may have attempted to fuse these genres in the past, but no one else I've ever heard has done it so well. If there's any justice, this release will break Piecka through to a new audience. It's the culmination of everything he's ever done, and he'll have a very hard time topping it.