[Album] Witch — Witch
Instead of easing the listener in, the album begins mid-ritual. The aesthetics, the soundscape, and the lyrical settings feel like a set of forces pulled into balance. Throughout this progression, the listener keeps circling the moment of facing a painful truth without ever quite resolving it. The Hero (or the “Fool”) grows through the invocation of inner forces, logic, and a patient negotiation of opposites, until the pattern resets and the cycle starts again. The songs grow from this seed of intellectual power inherent in all of us.
The lineup of this album called for success: J Mascis plays drums, Kyle Thomas handles vocals and guitar, Asa Irons plays guitar, and Dave Sweetapple plays bass. Production-wise, it feels close and smoky rather than cavernous. If you like your heavy music as a guided trance, this one drags you in by the sleeve and doesn’t apologize.
Buy on Bandcamp: witch.bandcamp.com/album/witch
Seer
“I was always just a man, just a sad man, I had no future… Until one day I met a man, I took his hand…
For you are I and I am you and we are both fools.”
With this invocation, the listener steps into a meditation framed as a fuzzy, bluesy reflection dressed in the veils of stoner orthodoxy. The Fool appears here as the start and end of every journey, the white rose of our soul always receptive to the call to move to the fringe of society, to step into the void, and begin the adventure.
By the end of Seer, the Fool hasn’t yet changed. He has just agreed to go.
Soul of Fire
Soul of Fire snaps the mood from inward to kinetic.
“Gotta let your mind go; Gotta free your body; Gotta have a drink now.”
The tempo suddenly picks up in a fast, intense call to break free from vanity and insolence. What began in introspection now catches flame.
Now the Fool learns that you can’t think your way out of everything.
Black Saint
From there, the album drops its weight into Black Saint. The manifestation of the realm of darkness in a crushing, downtempo invocation facilitates the hero’s inner growth toward realizing that everything is always changing and that nothing can really be owned.
“Little child in the garden; In the distance, a funeral bell
He throws a coin into the water; But there’s a demon in his wishing well”
This accumulation of energy reaches a climax around 4:20, followed by a well-conceived guitar solo. The contrast between restraint and release mirrors the record’s spiritual tension.
Now the Fool knows what it costs to want something badly. The “well” hears you, and answers in its own language.
Changing
Changing comes as a surge of energy and control. J Mascis kills it on the drums, locking effortlessly with the monumental riffs and bridges in this testament to the power of growth through mastering both inner and outer influences, whether fixed or malleable. After doubt and descent, here comes the proof of transformation.
Now the Fool realizes that growth isn’t a feeling but a skill.
Rip Van Winkle
Then comes the album’s gem, Rip Van Winkle. This is a compressed, creatively adapted retelling of Washington Irving’s classic tale (Project Gutenberg link). :contentReference[oaicite:0]{index=0} This story fits seamlessly into the album’s spiritual and logical progression.
After receiving illumination of his inner will and wrestling with painful realizations, the Fool finds himself in a world that has moved on without him. He remembers the comfort of old illusions and feels disoriented by the new world around him. Once awakened (aka connected to his true Self) the hero discovers he has aged, distant from the person he once was.
The context has shifted radically, and now he must understand who he is when all outer influences are gone. Now the Fool can’t go back. The old version of him won’t fit anymore.
Hand of Glory
From there, Hand of Glory takes the narrative deeper into shadow. Moving from New York State folklore to old European myth, the song conjures the occult image of the pickled severed hand of a hanged man, used as a candleholder to keep sleepers from waking.
Time is slowed and consciousness is blurred as we approach the story’s conclusion, perfectly matching the witchcraft imagery, spells, and doom/stoner pacing that have defined the journey so far.
“Happy people; They are gone; Evil ways; Are all I know”
“Glory” here is built through death or punishment. It comes at a cost. Often, that cost lives in the moral sphere. The hero, the wielder of the Hand of Glory, witnesses the light granted only to those Fools who dare to adopt the “evil ways,” those who delve into secrecy, hidden rituals, and the Taboo.
The Fool learns the hard truth that sometimes the only way forward is to accept what other people will never bless.
Isadora
The tale concludes with Isadora, an enchanting tune named after the ancient Greek “Isadora,” meaning “the gift of Isis,” the Egyptian goddess of magic and fertility. In a magical, incense-fogged setting of youthful sensitivity, Witch recount a story of love that marked the hero and continues to shape him even after coming of age. The repeated chanting of the name Isadora, almost like a mantra, brings the story full circle: love and transformation as the final lesson of the Fool.
Love is the change that stays change, the one thing you don’t outgrow, the knowledge you can’t reverse, the mark that doesn’t fade.
High point / low point: High point is the Black Saint climb into the 4:20 release and solo. Low point (if you need one) is the album’s refusal to hand you clean closure—because it wants you to keep circling the truth instead of conquering it.