Witch Mountain - Mobile of Angels

  by Paul Waller

published: 16 / 9 / 2014

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Review

The hippest place to live on earth? Probably Portland, Oregon, right? The hippest genre of rock music right now? Probably Doom metal. What do you get when you mix the two…enter Witch Mountain. First off, let me tell you that I love this band. 2011’s ‘South of Salem’ is still played regularly on my turntable and, whilst newer bands such as Blues Pills appear to have stolen their ‘female singer who can belt out a tune’ thunder a little, with their latest album Witch Mountain have stuck mostly to their metal guns and not embedded themselves under the blues rock banner like I thought they may have when I heard the beautiful yet lightweight and smokey album centre piece, ‘Your Corrupt Ways (Sour the Hymn)’. ‘Don’t Look Around’ and album opener ‘Psycho Animundi’ have riffs to kill for, but ‘Can’t Settle’ is the head banging master on here for my money. Slow and doomy riffing plus the most delicious vocal from Uta Plotkin brings this song kicking and screaming into the modern rock age, but you can’t help sense it was born thanks to a deep knowledge of Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. Then Uta vomits out the most guttural growls this side of a Cannibal Corpse album. It’s a belter. It’s no secret to Witch Mountain fans to know that after this record’s promotional touring has been completed the vocalist is leaving the band. Where this leaves them I can not say. The band functioned for years without Uta it's true, but her vocal style has become so entwined with the Witch Mountain sound that I wonder if the momentum the group has built over the past few years will flounder. I hope not because if listening to this beast of an album makes me a hipster then bring forth my waist coat and matching moustache. I am in.

Track Listing:-

1 Psycho Animundi
2 Can't Settle
3 Your Corrupt Ways (Sour the Hy
4 Mobile of Angels
5 The Shape Truth Takes

Band Links:-

https://www.facebook.com/witchmountain
https://twitter.com/witch_mountain

Label Links:-

http://www.svartrecords.com/
https://www.youtube.com/user/SvartReco
https://www.facebook.com/svartrecords
https://twitter.com/svartrecords