Witchfinder: Witchfinder (2017)

With a name that references either a Cathedral song, a Vincent Price movie, or one of the original doom metal bands, you can bet that this is going to be some form of doom metal.  And then there is the hazy-looking band logo and thus stoner doom becomes the obvious conclusion to be drawn.  And so it is with France's Witchfinder.

This is just a four-song album, but each song lasts somewhere around ten minutes.  Witchfinder's influences are pretty clear right from the first fuzzed-out riff.  Take a little Cathedral, mix in some of the most psychedelic offerings from Electric Wizard, some Dopesmoker-era Sleep and a whole shitload of weed and voila, Witchfinder.  The songs are slow dirges with spacy, bass-heavy riffs and smoky vocals that sound like they were recorded in a cave.  Every so often, the band throws in a curve, like the crunchy mid-paced riff early in "Smoke a Weed Prayer", but by and large this is a band emulating the reefer madness of the aforementioned Sleep and Electric Wizard.

Despite the fact that I have never (and I mean absolutely never) used marijuana, or any other drug besides alcohol in fact, in my life, I absolutely love stoner doom.  At least when it is done well.  Witchfinder is highly derivative of some of the genre legends, but that does not mean that they do not do a damn fine job.  There may be no real discernible difference between this and Dopethrone, but it is still damn fun to listen to.  That's all I really want from my metal.