Bell Witch and Aerial Ruin - Stygian Bough Volume I

By Justin C. You’d be forgiven for thinking Stygian Bough Volume 1 was a split, since it does list both Bell Witch and Aerial Ruin as artists, but it’s a bit more complicated than that. This album features Erik Moggridge, who plays dark, acoustic folk under the name Aerial Ruin, playing with Dylan Desmond and Jesse Shreibman, the duo that makes up Bell Witch.

By Justin C.

Artwork by Adam Burke.

You’d be forgiven for thinking Stygian Bough Volume 1 was a split, since it does list both Bell Witch and Aerial Ruin as artists, but it’s a bit more complicated than that. This album features Erik Moggridge, who plays dark, acoustic folk under the name Aerial Ruin, playing with Dylan Desmond and Jesse Shreibman, the duo that makes up Bell Witch. It’s not a new band, per se--it’s not even a new idea, since Moggridge contributed vocals to Bell Witch’s monstrous album Mirror Reaper. It’s a collaboration. Or, given that the music often drifts into tempos so slow that metronomes can’t measure them, a funereal relay race, with both musical entities passing ideas back and forth.

Maybe the clearest example are the songs “Heaven Torn Low I (the passage)” and “Heaven Torn Low II (the toll).” Part I is mostly Aerial Ruin’s show, featuring Moggridge’s inimical clean vocals and acoustic guitar. But as the song progresses, Bell Witch begins to creep in around the edges, giving Moggridge’s sound the epic swell that’s usually implied in Aerial Ruin’s music, but not actually present.

Bell Witch and Aerial Ruin live. Photos by Nessie Spencer (licence).

As Part I slowly fades, Part II roars to life with the distorted bass and slow-moving melodicism that’s unmistakably Bell Witch. Moggridge continues to provide vocals, but massive, distorted bass notes stretch out and break into howls. The songs clearly take heavy emphasis from Aerial Ruin and Bell Witch, in that order, but it would be a mistake to say that Part I is “Aerial Ruin’s song” and Part II belongs to Bell Witch. One often takes center stage, but the other is always supporting and expanding.

There’s a lot of heart-breaking beauty in this album, and even though it’s just over an hour--which is pretty tame by funeral doom standards--it has the effect of dilating time. I listened to this album during a long drive, the first in a long time, and the light, pandemic-affected traffic on top of the music made me feel as if I were being pulled into some other realm. The album feels endless at times, but not in a tedious or tiring way. Timothy Leary’s old drug-addled adage of “turn on, tune in, and drop out” applies in a weird way, but no LSD is needed here. The artistry itself that takes you away.

Khemmis - Desolation

By Calen Henry. Khemmis’ last album, Hunted, immediately grabbed me. Their “doomed rock and roll” combined melodic, epic doom with elements of stoner-doom, death-doom, and traditional metal for a wonderful “kitchen sink” approach to metal.

By Calen Henry.

Artwork by Sam Turner.

Khemmis’ last album, Hunted, immediately grabbed me. Their “doomed rock and roll” combined melodic, epic doom with elements of stoner-doom, death-doom, and traditional metal for a wonderful “kitchen sink” approach to metal. Desolation sees the band digging in to their signature sound and shedding much of the kitchen sink approach to create their best record yet. The album will likely cement their legacy alongside bands like Pallbearer and Power Trip as crossover darlings.

The vast majority of Desolation is Khemmis’ signature melodic doom: melancholy, slightly sinister riffs under soaring tenor vocals. This time they delve even deeper into melody, edging further towards traditional metal, with harmonized vocals lines, lyrical dual guitar leads, and even some lower register vocals reminiscent of the late David Gold of Woods of Ypres

The mix of traditional metal and doom carries through to the band's lyrics. They adopt a lot of the swords and sorcery trappings of traditional metal, but, in a time when traditional metal lyrics about the glory of conquerors' pillaging can seem problematic, Khemmis are refreshingly depressing. Truly living up to their self-styled genre, "doomed rock and roll," they sing of cursed bargains, doomed legions, sole survivors and the associated guilt, isolation, and desolation. It’s extremely fitting that the album is called Desolation, as that single word gets right to the crux of the album’s themes.

Photos by Nessie Spencer (license).

They also ditch other musical styles, except for death-doom, and the result is transcendent. The deep dive into melody juxtaposed against the filthy death-doom riffs creates a fantastic dynamic throughout the album, but it’s when the band directly mixes the two, giving us twin guitar shredding over galloping death-doom or harsh vocals over soaring guitar melodies, that their sound becomes truly legendary. Album opener “Bloodletting” showcases this beautifully, when soaring guitar and epic vocals suddenly break into a filthy death-doom riff accompanied by an extended twin guitar solo.

With the overall stylistic change, the album doubles down on melodic vocals and some raspy harsh vocals that are more black metal than death-doom, but they work extremely well with the band’s overall sound. The melodic vocals are even better than on previous albums, and the combination of lower vocals and faster tempos than Pallbearer sets Khemmis apart from their closest sonic touch point.

The production is also slightly improved over Hunted. It's a bit more dynamic, and although it's still brickwalled, the slight improvement makes a difference. There is no audible clipping, and everything sounds just a bit better than it did in 2015.

Desolation one of the year's best metal albums, and the stylistic changes mean that anyone not completely melody-adverse should check it out, even those not sold on Khemmis' previous material. The band has completely come into their own. Hunted absolutely floored me in 2015, and Desolation is leagues ahead of it.