It's here again, you know what we are talking about, that time when you have to warn your neighbours that you are going to be playing a new album released by one of those bands from the Italian acid-doom/scuzz scene, another one of those many Italian bands that have traded in their Sabbathian robes for a seat at the altar of Electric Wizard. The band in question this time is Milan's Witchsnake a duo consisting of Al (guitars, bass and vocals) and Joe (drums), a duo who have already caused our neighbours collective ears to bleed with their previous releases "Witchsnake" and "Deathcult of the Snake". The band have just released their third album "Satanas" an album consisting of eight tracks the band have dubbed as "unholy hymns carved in smoke and sulfur" further backing this statement up by describing the album as "not a journey, but a collapse, a slow, suffocating crawl through burning swamps, shattered altars, and psilocybin-drenched visions of damnation". Sounds good to us!
Opening track "Hell Breaks Loose" is what Motorhead might have sounded like if they had chosen hallucinogens over amphetamines, it's breathy smoked too many cigarettes, drank too much Jack Daniels Lemmy-esque vocals are surrounded by rolling filth drenched refrains and powerhouse drumming offset with occasional bursts of Hendrixian flavoured soloing, it's a killer start but things get even better as the album progresses. Next we have "Dethroned", the songs low slung gritty riffage, interspersed with piercing distortion drenched guitar motifs and dissonant solos, is underpinned with solid thunderous drumming over which its vocals are intoned rather than sang, the songs boasts a groove that sits squarely in low'n'slow stoner doom territory but it is a pungent form of stoner doom that reeks of disease and decay. "Witchburner" follows and jams a more stoner rock-like dynamic and also features a vocal that bears a semblance of melody but don't start thinking that this song is any less pungent than its predecessor just because there is an element of flow in its vocals as the filthiness here is just as tangible. "Black Blood Bayou" is a demented travelogue that finds our hosts describing a place where you can witness "larvae crawling into the cracked skull" and where you can feel "the heat of death" against a backdrop of putrid thrumming proto-doom. "Ashes To Ashes, Fuck To Fuck" is a rhythmically hard driven instrumental packed to the rafters with some of the dirtiest guitar work you will witness this side of the rapture and is followed by title track "Satanas" a song that is akin to listening to Lemmy telling a bedtime story while an avalanche of giant boulders tumbles down a mountainside. Penultimate number "Demona" does seem somewhat more structured than much of what has gone before, what with its rolling refrains, punchy drumming and swirling solo's, but it's really hard to tell if something is structured while your ears are bleeding. Final track "Acid Hell" is a perfectly titled opus that comes out of the gate swinging and does not stop until your brain is just a jellied mush, filthy guitar solos accompanied by barely audible vocal rumblings and forceful percussion coming at you in face-melting wave upon wave of voluptuous volume.
© 2025 Frazer Jones
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