Bewitched: Diabolical Desecration (1996)

Not to be confused with the sitcom from the 1960's, Bewitched is a Swedish blackened thrash metal band with a short, but rather impressive career.  I am not really sure why they are so little-known, but flaming out within a decade probably did not help.  I recently picked up a box set of the band's first four albums, so each of the next four days I will look at a Bewitched album.

I guess referring to the band as a blackened thrash metal band is an oversimplification and more of a broad generalization for their entire career.  We will get to that over the course of the next few days.  But this album in particular is more of a speed metal album with some black metal influences.  The riffs on this album would sound in place on an album by Venom or Motörhead.  The only real black metal influences come in the form of the raspy vocals and the fact that a lot of proto-black metal bands tended to sound a little like this.

The songs are insanely catchy and there are some truly great riffs here.  My particular favorites are the main riff to "Born of Flames" and "Holy Whore".  The guitarist (and vocalist) on this release is Blackheim who would go on to be a fairly important man in the Swedish extreme metal scene, spending time with Bloodbath and also creating the Diabolical Masquerade project.  The lyrical content is mostly silly, juvenile attempts at sounding evil ("Burnin' Paradise") or sexual content ("Hard as Steel (Hot as Hell)").  So it is not the most mature-sounding album in the world, but for this type of metal, that is not shocking.

Diabolical Desecration was Bewitched's first album and it was a decent-enough start.  There is nothing mind-blowingly original here, but it is a competent take on a genre that has been around for quite some time.  Bewitched had not really found themselves here, but it is still an enjoyable album.