It's all but unavoidable: The press for Witch's self-titled debut will be dominated by references to J Mascis, the alt-rock living legend who lends both musical talents and an impressive head of hair to the band. And in a way, that isn't so bad; most listeners of catholic tastes won't find it too hard to see parallels between Witch's monolithic hard rawk and the more plodding aspects of Mascis' "other" gig, Dinosaur Jr. ("Sludgefeast," anyone?). Indeed, the jet-fueled riffage and shrieking solos which lurch out of the speaker during opening track "Seer" wouldn't sound out of place at one of Dinosaur's reunion shows... except for the fact that Mascis isn't playing them. Instead, he's behind the drums for this project, and that little detail makes it hardly fair to keep calling Witch a "J Mascis Solo Project."
So how do we label it? Some have argued for "doom metal", though I'm not big on genres, and the use of a loaded word like "metal" runs the risk of driving listeners away with conjured images of corny faux-occultism, flights of virtuosic self-indulgence, and other such cheap preteen thrills. Not that Witch doesn't exude all of the above - this is easily the guiltiest pleasure to make it onto Pitchfork's newswire since the Darkness, an entirely unselfconscious, unironic celebration of everything brutish and juvenile about heavy rock (except maybe the sex). It's just that this particular mix of plodding, leaden sludgefeasts and dime-store mysticism has a hell of a lot more in common with proto-metalheads like Black Sabbath than, say, Venom.
And man, does it rock. Asa Irons, the real man behind Witch's fretwork, wields his axe like it really is a deadly weapon, his über-heavy tone about the last thing you'd expect from a guy who also plays with "avant-folk" group Feathers and who contributed to Devendra Banhart's Cripple Crow last year. His Feathers bandmate, vocalist Kyle Thomas, also gets credit for a voice that can go from Bolanic effeminacy to he-banshee wail at the flick of a switch. Meanwhile, Mascis and bass player Dave Sweetapple hold down the bottom end with rock-solid, pummeling rhythm-section work.
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