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Witching Metal Ritual (2013) is the debut full-length album by US power metal act Witches Mark. The group previously released an EP, A Grim Apparition (2009), from which a couple of songs have been carried forward to the full-length. Witches Mark have attracted a few guests to their debut album from the USPM scene, including Jack Starr (ex-Virgin Steele) and Ross the Boss (Death Dealer, ex-Manowar).
Witching Metal Ritual is a difficult album right from the start. Like with recent releases from artists such as Crystal Viper and Damnations Day it gets off to a pretty shaky start with its opener, Bringers of Heavy Metal Death, before starting to pick up into something a bit more praiseworthy, albeit still with an up and down sort of quality level. Bringers of Heavy Metal Death sets all the wrong first impressions however. The vocals sound completely sub-par at best and the instruments sound as if produced for a black metal record, which Witching Metal Ritual isn't.
This brings me around to the real problem with the album. The songs may start to pick up with Salem's Fire but it's like Witches Mark wrote the album without really knowing what they wanted it to be. There are elements of a lot of genres here, with the album being best described as US power metal or speed metal most of the time, but there's also forays into traditional metal, and even nods to doom metal in We Die and some extreme touches through harsh vocals, such as in Where None Can Follow, while it also sounds like they want to be both retro and modern at the same time. But where some artists can make such genre hopping work and feel natural, on Witching Metal Ritual it instead ends up sounding messy, something not helped by the abrupt quality jump between the first two tracks. The title track sounds the best of the lot and proves that Witching Metal Ritual could have been a much more enjoyable album, if the band could have just kept a consist level on the quality and direction of the music.
Witching Metal Ritual isn't exactly a recommendable release, but there are some positive aspects to it that deserve recognition, to the overall tune of a two stars range rating. The first track is completely expendable and there are definite moments where the album is simply frustrating because of poor production but when the band does deliver a good track, they do it well enough to suggest that they might have a good record in them, somewhere down the line.
43/100
(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven: http://metaltube.freeforums.org/witches-mark-witching-metal-ritual-t3291.html)