It’s occult and it’s doom, but not as we know it
West Virginia quartet Brimstone Coven probably know the feeling of being born too late. In the build-up to this record, main man Corey Roth – who supplies such glorious fuzzy, warm and yet thick as molasses guitar tones throughout this record – has spoken about being born in the early 1970s. It’s a fairly safe bet that he wishes he’d emerged into the world in the early 1950s. Then, he’d have been in his teens and early twenties at the time of the peak of the bands he and the other guys seem to idolise.
That time in rocks history was – arguably – it’s most fertile period too. Certainly the great behemoths that Brimstone Coven follow in the footsteps of were around then, and there’s a fair chance that this band would’ve been massive.
Certainly this, their major label debut, stands up in such august company, and that company is more varied than you might think. Because for every one here that sounds like Black Sabbath – “The Seers” for example, with its fine riff and thick, smokey brew – there’s another – such as the acoustic and lilting “As We Fall” – that does something else entirely.
It’s this variance that is precisely why “Black Magic” is so very good. Any doom metal band can, after all, sound like Sabbath, there are considerably less that can say they sound like the Byrds. Brimstone Coven can.
This is down to a couple of distinct advantages that BC have. Firstly, they aren’t ready to be constrained. Then, singer “Big” John Williams is perfect for the role. But it’s more than that, the band make superb use of harmony vocals, a bit like those west coast bands of the 1960s.
So it is that work like the wonderfully OTT title track is made incredibly interesting by the delivery, and it’s follow up “Black Unicorn” seems to summoning all kinds of evil as it swirls around.
If those two are relatively short, then Brimstone Coven are equally adept – and no less enthralling – when they are, to use the 1960s parlance, wiggling out and having a jam. “Beyond The Astral” is a fantastic example of what they can achieve when they open their minds and drink the potion, but even that has to doff it’s cap to “The Plague” which manages to take the best bits of The Doors and the Mamas And Papas, without copying either.
It’s these psychedelic musical diversions which ensure that Brimstone Coven are going to be so well liked. The pulsing “The Eldest Tree” is the records most “out there” moment and it’s amongst it’s best too, but really, everything on offer here is shot through with a mark of quality.
Part mystical, part heavy metal, and part gentle strum, Brimstone Coven bring it all together and make it all work. Sometimes they marry all these parts on one song and it’s phenomenal. “Forsaken” is just that track.
Brimstone Coven deserve to be talked about in the same breath as their heroes and “Black Magic’s” inspiration. You can pay it no higher compliment. It will have you under its wonderfully bewitching spell.
Rating 9/10
