Thunderous. Anticipatory. Windswept. A Bugatti Veyron driving at top speed through the Uyuni Salt Flats. Batman. Witch Ripper’s The Flight After the Fall (Magnetic Eye Records) is all of this and more.
The ambiance charges at you like a herd of wild stallions with the wind in their hair. A stand-out track is ‘Madness and Ritual Solitude’. ‘Madness and Ritual Solitude’ is straight-up prog rock circa the late 1970s. It’s got bombastic drums courtesy of Joe Eck. Ralph Bakshi blistering guitars thanks to Chad Fox and Curtis Parker. And, Brian Kim’s bass line would make Charlie Mingus swoon. This is some insane intensity! That’s right, exclamation point! Then it gets all mean and nasty and gives off this death-metal vibe before it descends into this cacophonous mass of an ending! Total. Mind. Trip.
The Flight After the Fall’s most amazing song is ‘Everlasting in Retrograde Parts 1 and 2’. The song is an epic sixteen-minute and forty-three-second opus. It starts out like a lilting Led Zeppelin before descending into riffage. It then coalesces and twirls into the beautiful enveloping satin. The vocals are the deep guttural growls reserved for sludge metal. The music sludges up and becomes ever so grounded. The shades of Mars Volta mixed with Slayer are amazing. It then erupts like a volcano, a winged spirit that lifts the song into the heavens. It’s clouds and racing and diving, and Emmerson, Lake, and Palmer. All of this happened in the first five minutes.
There is this section that reminds me of horses running on a sandy beach during sunset. It’s guitar playing and tribalistic drumming – the feelings of anticipation surge through the listener… just when you think you will explode, the music falls into this dreamy Pink Floyd space, and ‘Everlasting in Retrograde Parts 1 and 2’ darn near brings tears to your eyes. The structure is gob-smacking, too – there is so much going on with this song that it’s dizzying. It’s the Tannhauser method crafted to perfection.
That’s two, just two, of the amazing tracks from The Flight After the Fall but they represent what you will find within. The more you listen to the album, the more entranced you become by it. You can see the album as well as feel and hear it. Witch Ripper created a visceral album. The Flight After the Fall will haunt your every sense.
Buy the album here:
https://witchripper.bandcamp.com/album/the-flight-after-the-fall-2
9 / 10
VICTORIA ANDERSON