adg211288 Sometimes a band releases a real killer of an album that blows you away, kicks your arse and just leaves you wanting more. Then when the follow-up to that great release comes along there's suddenly only one question that needs to be asked: 'what the hell happened?' Such is the sad case of UK heavy metal act Arkham Witch and their third album I Am Providence (2015).

The group's previous album Legions of the Deep (2012) was the aforementioned great album. An excellent offering of traditional heavy metal with a healthy dose of thrash metal for good measure (and even a little bit of doom metal) that had the band singing of their love of H. P. Lovecraft and their home town of Keighley, England, I'd definitely rank it as one of the most interesting traditional metal albums of more recent years. They've taken the Lovecraft theme all the way with I Am Providence in that every song is based off of a different Lovecraft story, but what's resulted is an album that is admittedly quite a fun listen, but seems to lack the depth of its predecessor (no pun intended) in terms of song-writing.

There are a whopping twenty tracks on I Am Providence but it's not as imposing as it sounds as Arkham Witch have gone for a very much to the point style of writing this time around with the average track time being under even the three minute mark and the longest song here, And What Man Knows Kadath?, only clocking in at the 3:35 mark. I've got no problem with short songs like this per se but in this case it does seem to be the case that they're all over and done with before they've had any real chance of developing their ideas to become the sort of powerful tracks that I was expecting from Arkham Witch based off of the strengths of Legions of the Deep. I'm not saying that I Am Providence is a poorly written album, in fact the band actually manage to cram seemingly quite a lot into such short tracks and they're definitely catchy as hell, I just don't think they're as interesting as those on Legions of the Deep.

The changes in writing style from Legions of the Deep's typically longer tracks may however have come about by the changes in Arkham Witch's musical style as well. Though still a heavy metal band at heart Arkham Witch have injected some hefty doses of hard rock and even punk into their sound on I Am Providence. I can still hear the occasional brief nod towards thrash metal, but it's very fleeting. This one really is the case of a band almost completely reinventing themselves. The music is more lively and the band are playing with a great energy to go with it, which is something that works in the album's favour and there are definitely some songs of note that prove to be quite infectious such as Necronomicon and Hastur the Unspeakable. I'm just not sold on that this is an reinvention for the better for Arkham Witch.

I asked 'what the hell happened?' at the start of this review and to be fair it's probably too harsh of a question, as my feelings towards I Am Providence are more mixed than outright negative, but I do stand by it as even though this is an enjoyable release from the UK band I do find it to be a pretty large step backwards taking into consideration what they already showed themselves capable of with Legions of the Deep, especially song-writing.