Love Your Witch - Wow! That Sweet Magic (Album review)
About the Band
Love Your Witch are a stoner thrash metal band based in Tel Aviv, Israel formed around 2017 consisting of members Michael Kozlovsky (Guitar), Mor Gal (Bass and Vocals) and Amit Abrahami (Drums), they released a self titled album in 2018 and have four albums released so far including their most recent ‘Wow! That Sweet Magic’.
Album Art by: Conrad keely
The Review
This is an eight track release, we start out with ‘Lady Of The Forest’ it starts out with a voice saying “we bring you the witches tale” before a thunder clap and a slow strings intro alongside the noise of rain, this is a really interesting beginning to a song, it sets up a really cool atmosphere and feel. The slow strings and other sounds end around 2 minutes in, there’s a breath then we get into the low metal sound. It takes almost three minutes for the vocals to start, I love the seamless change between the lighter more acoustic sound at the start to the heavier metal sound, We get an instrumental about four minutes which leads into a heavier thrash sound and heavier vocals, this song is an interesting amalgamation of styles that shouldn’t work but do. Towards the end we slow down again, This song sets the mood for the whole album I feel, all the blended styles are pretty interesting and it was a really fun listen. The next track ‘Real Life’ begins with this beautiful piano before a static sound, screaming and thrash sounding instrumental, this song went from 0 to 100 real quick and I was not prepared. It has a pretty cool instrumental bit about a minute in and the vocals sound amazing but the change from the nice piano to the metal sound is super abrupt and kind of shocking if you’re not expecting it.
Photo Credit: Dan Deutsch
Next up we have ‘Buddah’ which is the longest song on the album at just over 9 minutes, this track sounds like a really cool stoner metal/ thrash metal fusion with the low bass of stoner rock but the shredding of thrash. It speeds up a lot around 2 and a half minutes in before slowing back down almost a minute later, the vocals are a slightly scream sang which is a cool touch. The vocalist starts talk singing slightly around four minutes in, we get an instrumental break around five minutes in, the instrumentals are amazing on this record, the vocals for me are kind of hit and miss but the guitar, bass and drums are astounding and the other added instruments like the strings and piano in the two previous songs are really well done. The vocals eventually start up again before we get more talking, although the vocals are kind of hit and miss for me I enjoy how the vocalist changes up his vocal style, from screaming to regular singing and even to the bits where he’s just talking and talk singing, the song continues going through style changes like that, there’s screaming about eight minutes in with the slow stoner sounding instrumental and that plays us out to the end of the song. This track definitely shows what the band can do stylistically and was pretty fun to listen to, next song is ‘Suicidal Rabbit’ a more thrash sounding song only about a minute long, it helps to break up the album a bit.
Next is ‘Hunter’ a slower more stoner rock sounding track with a pretty awesome guitar bit that comes up around two minutes in, it follows some of the vocal changes in the previous songs, it also gets a lot faster later in the track, the guitar solo four minutes in sounds pretty cool and the loud, fast instrumental that plays us out is pretty awesome. ‘Mean Scream’ and ‘Usurper’ the next two songs follow the same tone and vocal changes that the previous songs did and finally, the last song ‘Golden Arc’ starts out with a slower guitar gradually getting louder until there’s a sudden stop and the music suddenly kicks in again, it’s played in short bursts for a bit, leaving the guitar playing between bursts of sound, we then kick into the song properly and follow the same vocal and instrumental changes as before.
Photo Credit: hak no
Conclusion
Overall the album is pretty good, vocals can be hit or miss but the vocalist uses a few different vocal styles which keeps it interesting, the instrumentals are spot on and the use of what sounded like viola or violin and piano is really cool, the other sound effects from the first track give it a really nice atmosphere and I just generally enjoy sound effects in music. It’s an enjoyable release and I definitely recommend at least checking it out
Photo Credit: david doh doh rosen
Music and Social media
You can check the bands social media and bandcamp here