WITCHRIST - Vritra - Blackened Death Metal - MLP

Alongside Diocletian (with whom they share members) and Heresiarch, WITCHRIST are a part of a cabal of New Zealand bands bringing barbarity and savagery back into black/death metal, and they've proven their dominance with two uniquely challenging LPs, 2010's Beheaded Ouroboros and 2012's The Grand Tormentor. Ever restless, just like that beheaded ouroboros, and now with KzR from the mighty BÖLZER on vocals, WITCHRIST yet again flip the script and smash boundaries with Vritra. Compared to the hypnotic bestiality of their first album and the war-metal overload of their second, on Vritra, the quartet drive deep into eldritch grinding death metal. World-eating in the realm of chaos, WITCHRIST prove with Vritra that in battle there is no law, and proceed to grindcrush the listener into all that remains. Three tracks, and all aptly titled - "Haruspex," "Transmuting Rituals," and the telltale "The Golden Ascent" - coalescing into a symbiosis of titanic heft and cosmic vastness: Vritra is the beginning, and the end.