Average doom, thy name is Witchsorrow. Not much has changed since their debut in 2010. They are still plying the same straightforward style of doom rooted in classic St. Vitus and Cathedral. God Curse Us is as decent as their debut and unfortunately just as unremarkable. And that’s really as far as it goes. Nothing standout, nothing exemplary, nothing all too memorable, just some competently played and produced doom. They’ve got a lovely guitar tone and a pile of riffs, just nothing that jumps out and says “Listen to me again!”

Most of the album moves in that familiar nodding doom plod. “Aurora Atra” shambles along up til they break out a charging up tempo riff in the last half. “God Curse Us” moves about with a similar narcotic lurch that builds and breaks to a similar crescendo. “Masters of Nothing” breaks the doom doldrums in the latter half with a nasty groove that stands as the highlight of the album. After a short instrumental, they return with “Megiddo”, a track whose dynamics echo Electric Wizard’s “I, Witchfinder”. “Breaking the Lore” is the shortest song, coming in at just under five minutes, and gallops along like a mix of St Vitus’ “Angry Man” and Hymns of Blood and Thunderera Gates of Slumber. They close it out with “Den of Serpents”, which is another track of lumbering doom in the vein of “Megiddo”.

Before you know it its 56 minutes later and the album is over. It’s all very by-the-numbers, run-of-the-mill, by-the-book, what have you…  The break in the latter half of Masters of Nothing has a nice swinging groove but despite the nice burly production there’s not much else that catches the ear. It’s not bad and it’s good enough given the proper mood, but doom has become such a saturated genre that bands without a particular creative spark or energy are destined to be subsumed by the blob of bands with similar influences. Witchsorrow are a fundamentally talented bunch, but all God Curse Us leaves me with is a dull impression and a desire to hear them up their game.

[Visit the band's website]

---

Comments