“The Slithering Bog moves slowly but heavily, accented by echoing growls and slow, oftentimes psychedelic, guitars. It’s an album that just feels creepy, in the best way.” – Decibel
The Slithering Bog is the oppressive, six-track offering from West Coast death doom collective SWAMP WITCH. Captured during July 2014 at Earhammer Studios in Oakland, California by Greg Wilkinson (Brainoil, Annihilation Time, Noothgrush, et al) and mastered at Trakworx in San Francisco by Justin Weiss (Ludicra, Slough Feg, Cormorant, et al), the record was initially released on cassette via Transylvanian Tapes and is now available on vinyl via Tribunal Of The Axe.
In celebration of its release, Decibel is currently streaming the record in full issuing, “What happens when you mix suffocating death/doom with hallucinogenic elements and lyrics about derealization then remaster it for vinyl? You get SWAMP WITCH‘s haunting The Slithering Bog…. The Slithering Bog moves slowly but heavily, accented by echoing growls and slow, oftentimes psychedelic, guitars. It’s an album that just feels creepy, in the best way.”
Succumb to the sounds of The Slithering Bog at THIS LOCATION.
The Slithering Bog comes available in three color variants (black, purple haze, and swamp green). For orders visit THIS LOCATION.
SWAMP WITCH is the culmination of psychedelic substances, occult practices, and a collective interest in dark, strange, and ultimately hallucinogenic music originally devised with the sole intent to commit and record ritualistic extremities through heavy music only for the night of 9/9/09. In the aftermath, members found themselves pressed to continue the slow-burning drudgery sparked on that September ninth into the months that followed, leading to shows, recordings, band members towing themselves out of the smog from Central Valley, California and into Oakland (and Arcata, respectively) and finally, the vinyl release that recollects the original material of that evening: Gnosis.
The punishing, murky layers protruding from 2011’s Gnosis recordings drip with the trance-laden, drug-induced efforts of ’70s psychedelia compressed into the claustrophobic toil and painful repetition of ’90s sludge. This concept of Gnosis actually seems more akin to H. P. Lovecraft’s ideas of psychosis and derealization as the only thing the feeble human mind can experience when confronting truth (cosmicism), as opposed to gnosis in the classic, transcendental sense of the term. In other words, it’s fucked up.
The Slithering Bog continues where Gnosis left off: massive riffs and drug induced occult imagery dripping with psychedelia emphasized on tracks like opener “Strange Cults” and the grim pursuit that is “The Marsh of Delusion.” The psychedelia evoked here by SWAMP WITCH is offset by a painful and toiling death/doom; nasty, alienating, tempos filled with otherworldly visions. Although description of this style range may seem conflicting, the lyrical themes involving psychosis and derealization create an obvious connection and intention between any supposed opposition of sound. The sound SWAMP WITCH presents here is involved with channeling a period of doom, before it broke big, that wasn’t needlessly defined by sub genres: it’s all dark and heavy. Indeed, the end result of almost two years of writing proved worthy, as warped landscapes and fungal textures resting somewhere between dream-like and sleep paralysis culminated into The Slithering Bog.
“Managing a fine balance between lumbering, sludgy doom metal and drug-fractured psychedelia, the band brings to mind the likes of Yob, Electric Wizard, and Weedeater, but there’s something altogether deeper running through the proceedings than mere sonic affiliations.” – Rue Morgue
“This record literally creeps up on you, and traps you slowly and imperceptibly, and when you realize that its slimy and vile tentacles are already around your neck, it is too late, you’re fucked.” – Cvlt Nation
“…swampy, witchy, stinking psychotropic sludge…” – Echoes And Dust
“Slow, nasty, compelling, and repugnant; The Slithering Bog is the soundtrack to lost nightmares. You may not realize it yet, but this means it’s utterly essential.” – Wonderbox Metal
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