WITCHCRAFT · Nucleus | CD

Jewel case CD.

Background information about 'Nucleus'

There is a moment about two minutes into "Malstroem" where Witchcraft stop being a retro band and become something far stranger — the Hammond organ starts breathing, the riff opens up like a trapdoor, and you realise this is not the same group that made "The Alchemist". "Nucleus" is the sound of a band tearing up their own rulebook and rebuilding it out of heavier, darker, more ambitious material. Magnus Pelander's voice has never sounded this haunted, and the rhythm section locks into grooves that owe as much to early '70s hard rock as they do to doom.

The title track is the beast at the centre of it all, a fourteen-minute sprawl that shifts from a creeping, almost folk-tinged intro into a crushing, hypnotic riff cycle and back out again, and it earns every single one of those minutes. Elsewhere, "The Outcast" swings with a nasty, bluesy swagger, "An Exorcism of Doubts" builds tension until it snaps, and the closing "Breakdown" stretches past fifteen minutes without ever losing the plot. This is patient, deliberate, riff-worshipping music made by people who clearly grew up on the heavy stuff and then decided to push it somewhere new.

It is a record that rewards the headphones and the long drive equally, and it still sounds like nobody else. For fans of: Black Sabbath, Pentagram, Graveyard, Blues Pills, Kadavar.

Other Versions

2-LP - BLACK DLP · Sold out 2-LP - CLEAR DLP · Sold out DIGIPAK CD · 17,99 € GREEN DLP · 36,99 €

Track listing

1. Malstroem
2. Theory of Consequence
3. The Outcast
4. Nucleus
5. An Exorcism of Doubts
6. The Obsessed
7. To Transcend Bitterness
8. Helpless
9. Breakdown

Manufacturer: Warner Music Group Germany Holding GmbH, Alter Wandrahm 14, 20457 Hamburg, Germany, Contact: www.nuclearblast.com