Album title:
Paralyzed
Artist:
Witch
Label:
Tee Pee
Depending on your sources, Witch are either a metal 'super-group' with near-Herculean levels of commitment, debunking any 'side-project' slurs, or a ramshackle ensemble that forms osmosis-like and plays live almost as an afterthought. With the only notable emissary being Dinosaur Jr's J Mascis, quite literally taking a backseat to drumming duties, hyperbole like 'super-group' seems erroneous. The latter description is certainly more flattering; five grown men so indebted to proto-70s metal that 'Black Sabbath' is written through them like a stick of rock. With titles like Space Gold (think ghoulish merry-go-round metal) and Psychotic Rock (frenzied, schizophrenic barking), Paralyzed propels along nicely on Hawkwind's swirling vortex of a slipstream. Occasionally, some drone-y, plodding tangents waylay the journey, however, as eternal metal meat-heads Beavis and Butthead astutely observed upon hearing Radiohead's Creep; "Maybe if the bits that suck didn't suck so much, then the bits that rock wouldn't rock so much." Indeed. [Darren Carle]