As soon as the first track on Witchfinder’s new record Forgotten Mansion hits, I know I’ve started my journey through the deliciously disorienting doom wormhole to a darker dimension! They’ve got an addictive groove and sultry melodies that ride vast waves of percussion, which is everything I love in doom and more. Forgotten Mansion comes out via Mrs Red Sound Records on November 18th — get it here. Today we’re lucky to be sharing this behemoth of a record with you in full, so get your doom fill below.
Personally, I wanted a more modern sound for the drums, something more defined and a bit more prominent, although in this genre, it’s more of a background element and the melody is more prominent. We love rhythmic breaks, the idea is always to try and implement hardcore inspired grooves, but it’s really the big breaks that we love, it’s something that I think defines us quite well. We were already doing it on Hazy Rites with the end of Sexual Intercourse, so we pushed it a bit further!
Thomas
The main theme is a mind exploration represented by this big, scary mansion that you would be afraid to go into and yet when you face it, you can find joy, tranquility and a nostalgia for a reassuring past. Each piece is a facet of our mind and there are as many facets as there are zeros in infinity so we wanted to explore what speaks to us. Our relationship with memories, the way our consciousness can eventually degrade and forget everything, leaving only the image of vanishing ghosts, the problems of loving a drug are also addressed. All in all, it’s an album about life and its ups and downs, but also about the warmth it can give us.
Kevyn
We wanted to have a massive and punchy sound, sometimes close to Monolord, sometimes close to Hardcore. Personally, I wanted to have the most ghostly sound possible, an organ from an old horror movie, present in the background of the creation but creating fundamental atmospheres.
This mansion that is the heart of the album represents disturbance, supernatural, almost paranormal (even if I don’t like this word). There is a certain taste from us of all these stories of spirits and witches which sticks to the recurrent theme but it is also to be understood in a double sense: our music is an ode to the “over-interpretation” of myths, ghosts, witches and other supernatural colossus which are in our imagination but not only!
Clément
