Crippled Lucifer - Burning Witch

Burning Witch are a US doom/drone band born of the ashes of Thorr's Hammer and featuring Stephen O'Malley of Khanate/Sunn))0 fame. Like Khanate, Crippled Lucifer specialise in utterly torturous and crushingly slow doom/drone/sludge, and their 2008 release'Crippled Lucifer' is a double-disc compilation cd consisting of their various collected splits and Eps. The songs all sound very similar, with peaks and troughs of crushing feedback-heavy riffs breaking constantly in extreme slow-motion, whilst vocalist 'Edgy 59' offers up half-deranged and utterly desperate screamed vocals layered loosely over the top of the guitars and shambling drums. The introspective ...  Read the complete review

Inexplicably bearing the same title as the defunct band's only full-length release from 1998, 'Crippled Lucifer' is a comprehensive posthumous collection of rare Burning Witch material that collects together the 'Rift.Canyon.Dreams' and 'Towers...' EPs as well as the tracks contributed to split releases with Goatsnake and Asva. Burning Witch play an extreme form of doom metal that will hardly be anyone's cup of tea at all, and it's clear from how samey it all sounds that the band wasn't interested in targeting a wider audience outside of the doom community. The main problem I have with it is that it's all so damn boring; not only does every song sound exactly ...  Read the complete review