WITCHING HOUR's highly anticipated third album.
WITCHING HOUR came to life in 2006 and are currently based in the southwest of Germany. Although their discography is relatively sparse the past dozen years, it is of uniformly high quality. Their two albums for Evil Spell Records - 2009's Rise of the Desecrated and especially 2011's Past Midnight... - are prized artefacts of the deep underground, confidently portraying a unique and highly idiosyncratic form of blackened thrash. Now, with the long-awaited ...And Silent Grief Shadows the Passing Moon, WITCHING HOUR shall prove that they're some of the black metal scene's most gifted songwriters.
Sequenced like a story and flowing with almost dream-like ease, ...And Silent Grief Shadows the Passing Moon is the album whereby WITCHING HOUR move from sepulchral blackthrash magick towards ancient metal mysticism. The transition is an enviously fluid one, as the characteristically high songwriting standards the band have held from the beginning are now transposed onto more nuanced, dynamic, and timelessly HEAVY METAL creations. It all sounds as old as time itself, yet breathes and heaves with a positively invigorating freshness. Glorious and gloomy melodies gallop forward into the fog-choaked night, instilling an atmosphere that's simply impossible to shake, but also latching their claws into the deepest, most emotional corners of the soul.
For WITCHING HOUR create an experience here, one that honorably straddles the divide between traditional metal's rigorous foundation and black metal's orthodox/unorthodox duality. Put another way, ...And Silent Grief Shadows the Passing Moon is a 43-minute, absolutely addicting journey from which you'll never want to return.
