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Wykked Wytch > Something Wykked This Way Comes > 2000, CD, Demolition Records > Reviews
Wykked Wytch - Something Wykked This Way Comes

Coming Soon to the Coven Next to You - 85%

bayern, March 6th, 2018

Believe it or not, but before indulging in the extreme progressive metal realms, this batch were thrashers, and quite good at that. Listening to their gothic melodramatic theatrics offered on the more recent instalments, I oftentimes think which could have been the better option for a building of a career in their case, to remain within the thrash metal roster, or to embrace a more encompassing, but hardly more fashionable, sound having in mind which way the winds started blowing a few years after this album’s release.

I doubt that the guys (and a girl, the vocalist) were pondering over such potential stylistic transformations when they shot the album reviewed here in the midst of the aggro/groovy/industrial campaign, a classic thrash beast if there ever was one back then, the band paying tribute to what was good back in the 80’s with a larger palette, as a matter of fact, which also featured a power/thrash hybrid not far from early Metal Church on the opening “Wytch’s Sabbath” the girl, the alias Ipek, leading the show assuredly with a high-strung shouty timbre not far from David Wayne (R.I.P., Metal Church again), with nice melodic leads adding more to the patiently woven drama which is rudely interrupted by the more aggressive semi-technical shredder “In Darkness Let Me Dwell”. “Resurrection” is a great contrasting blend of doom and thrash the band managing to pull the best out of both sides in a way no worse than Fear of God’s “Beyond the Veil”; and “Black Widow” doesn’t stray too far from this officiant approach thrashing in a steam-rolling mid pace.

“Psychotic Waltz” is not exactly a tribute to the famed American progressive metallers, but is a fair mid-tempo cut with doomy overtones influencing "Dripping Blood” which bloods... sorry, broods onward with heavy hypnotic riffage and a strong reverberating bass bottom. The bass player remains a major performer for “Expect No Mercy” which is crushing pounding thrash at its absolute best also carrying some of the epic flair of the 80’s US brotherhood, the latter staying around for another seismic proposition, “Voices are Calling”, which thrashes with more spite later Ipek sounding more pissed, even death-prone, the girl missing from “Farewell to the Coven” that wraps it on in an elegiac all-instrumental fashion, the lead guitar player taking over, his efforts hampered a bit by the hissing sound quality.

Yeah, the beginnings were nothing like the gothic black/death metal symphonies the band started churning out in the new millennium; this is unadulterated rowdy old school metal with a dark, moody vibe, a defiant slap in the face or the ruling forces that may have passed by this outfit due the goofy name. And not only, but even better things arrived three years later with the 2-track promo which was intended as a mouth waterer for an upcoming second opus titled “Dispelling the Myth”. Both cuts were excellent technical thrash/deathsters ala early Malhavoc and Vacant Grave showing the guys (and a girl) having grown as musicians, ready to enter the new millennium as dignified old school defenders…

Well, this scenario never came to pass; an album under that title was never released, and these two pieces remained just an isolated experiment. A profound change of heart must have taken place in the band’s camp when the 00’s hit as the sophomore was a gothic black extravaganza, strongly influenced by Cradle of Filth, not bad by that genre’s standards, but very remote from the effort here in almost every conceivable aspect. “Nefret” was a considerable improvement with a more compact, more complex, also death-fixated at times, sound, and the other showings that followed were by no means flops, the shadow of the mentioned British act brought back more or less tangibly. The “wicked witch” and her entourage are still making the rounds, ultimately trying to deceive themselves that they didn’t sell their souls to thrash some 20 years back.

Boring, talentless, over-ambitious - 50%

erebuszine, May 14th, 2013

Hmmm... I wonder if this band has really read a lot of Ray Bradbury, aside from the novel from which they stole the title of this album. No matter. Reviewing this record poses something of a challenge for me: this isn't the kind of music that I normally get to listen to, and it really isn't the sort of thing that I would go in for on my own if I was shopping for new CDs. This is in no way a negative aside: Wykked Wytch are not exactly my cup of tea (a little too cartoonish, to tell you the truth - or rather, a different kind of cartoonish from what I am used to, let's be fair) but I can see how they would appeal to a certain minority or niche in the underground. A quick question - why the 'y' substituted for 'i' in their name? Is that supposed to be a feminist comment, a gender-political statement? Just a regular garden-variety gimmick? The tiny bio delivered with this promo says that this band 'combines a vast palette of influences' - a legitimate claim, even if it is a bit overstated. Wykked Wytch throw in a lot of extra elements/influences/musical addendums on the edge of their sound to boost their own sense of originality and to try to keep their rather simplistic style from getting too monotonous - here we have some classical guitar work, movie samples (from Evil Dead, no less), trilling lead work, etc. For the most part this music is centered around an outdated thrash metal framework (simple muted chords, bouncing rhythms, completely retro lyrics and choruses, cover art from some children's Halloween book) and on top of that they add in middle segments, intros, or outros that try to stretch these fundamentals into something new. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don't. The opening song 'Wytch's Sabbath' is probably the best song on this disc, so it was a wise choice for an opener, but it also sets a standard that I feel the rest of this material can't live up to. It also seems to boast a different production than the second song - what? How do you explain that? Maybe I'm imagining it.

Yes, this band has a female singer, the 'diva' (why do labels insist on calling all female singers divas?) 'Demoness' Ipek, who, the bio claims, is of German and Turkish heritage (why does this matter at all?), and she is probably the only thing that sets this band apart from a million others bands playing this kind of music during Happy Hour in your favorite local bar every day. Her vocals show a great deal of intensity (I hesitate to use the term 'passion') and emotion at times, and while she is definitely in the minority when it comes to her singing/screaming style (a lot closer to Chuck Billy than Anneke from The Gathering could ever be!), I don't mind her vocals at all. In 'Wytch's Sabbath' they are actually pretty good, if a little strained towards the end. Again, she offers up a sense of style that is completely retro in feel - coming off like a Bay Area thrash singer (a little like Baloff from Exodus in certain instances) when she's not just screaming her head off. Because she seems to be the focus and center of this band (the bio booklet features no less than three pictures of her) I think I can safely say that this thing is all a promotional tool for the advancement of her 'career' - that, or the record label really thinks pictures of her will sell albums.

I have the feeling that a large amount of the material on this record is actually from an early date - or has been worked over a number of times before the recording, to the point where all the original/subversive points have been ironed out in an attempt to make all the songs sound as if they belong on the same album (meaning they all come from the same period of composition) - there is a certain flatness to this material that I can't escape when listening to it... as if this band just can't seem to create something new, original, or really innovative even though they are trying very hard to do so. Oh well. Halfway through this record I started to fall asleep, more out of desperation than anything else... if this band is going to release anything more in the future, I would suggest they take a long, hard look at what else is going on the scene... this album sounds like the band has been deep-frozen for fifteen years.

UA

Erebus Magazine
http://erebuszine.blogspot.com

Wykked Thrash/Death/Prog. - 91%

hells_unicorn, December 17th, 2007

Back during my tenure as a guitar student at West Chester University was when I truly understood how vibrant metal still was in the USA underground, in direct contrast to what the radio kept vomiting out of course, even and including college radio. It was during my tenure that I met Mark Warnok, better known by his stage name “Mark Warlokk” to the fans of the two projects that he was involved in over the past 2 decades. He had been a student in the late 80s and an avid fan of shredders like George Lynch, Rhandy Rhodes, and Marty Friedman, but had left before completing his performance degree due to personal obligations and returned to complete his major in the early 2000s, while I was a junior working on a dual degree.

Before meeting him I had not been a real big fan of metal styles featuring harsh vocals, mostly because all the stuff I had encountered had either been diarrhea sounding tremolo riff drenched or 3rd rate Slayer worship with 10th rate shriek vocals so poorly produced that it sounds like its being done through a megaphone. After sampling some music from his 2 projects my taste in metal was given a huge evolutionary leap. The primary catalyst was Mark’s keen sense of organization, the 80s sensibility of a well structured solo that doesn’t simply meander on a few perpetual speed licks, and the lack of creative inhibition in the songwriting.

The “Wykked Wytch” of the Mid-90s and the one of today are radically different musically, although lyrically they still put forth the same gothic influenced lyrics. A good deal of this is likely due to Mark Warlokk’s presence as guitarist on this album, though the entire band going through a complete overhaul with only Ipek as the remaining founder likely played a role. I can still recall Mark telling me while he was touting his latest project called “Carnivean” that the reasons behind the band’s break-up were due to clashing egos, and that he suspected that the new Wykked Wytch would probably not bear much resemblance to what he had shown me. Indeed, the newer incarnation of the band sounds more like a quasi-Cradle of Filth extreme gothic band than anything else.

“Something Wykked This Way Comes” doesn’t truly conform to the gothic metal genre in the sense that exists today or has since it was popularized by Type O Negative and a few others. Musically it listens like a progressive death/thrash hybrid with a heavy dash of Bay Area influences and a few hints at 18th and early 19th century classical guitar maestros like Fernando Sor and Mauro Guiliani, no doubt the result of Mark’s tenure at West Chester years before this was recorded. The vocals are just downright evil sounding; just picture a female Chuck Schuldiner meets a more reserved Danny Filth and you’ll be part of the way there. It can be plainly stated that those who pioneer a genre rarely get the credit they deserve, especially considering that Ipek was pushing a female presence in the death metal style at around the same time that Angela Gossow’s work with Asmodina was taking shape, completely independent of each other I might add.

Mark Warlokk’s lead playing is heavily different from most of the death and thrash metal outfits I’m familiar with. Rather than relying on a lot of feedback noise, whammy bar gimmicks, and rapid pentatonic runs the way Kerry King does, his solos are quite clean and structured, yet simultaneously avoid the monotonous sameness of Kirk Hammet’s epic pentatonic calisthenics. Most of the old 80s shred gods and NWOBHM axe men have a bit of a presence in Mark’s solos, including Yngwie Malmsteen if you listen to several of the lead fills on the instrumental outro “Farewell to the Coven”.

If I had to pick a best song out of all the impressive work on here, it would definitely have to be the album opener “Wytch’s Sabbath”. The stormy atmosphere and melancholy Fernando Sor inspired classical guitar intro is the perfect prelude to a downright wykked song, from start to finish. It has riffs aplenty, an extremely memorable solo that invokes some of the old baroque maestros of the clavier such as Handel and Telemann, and enough vocal drama and evil to fit in with the progeny of Venom and Mercyful Fate. The rest of the stuff on here draws heavily from 80s thrash and death acts with the occasional classical interlude or neo-classical inspired solo, all consistently following the precedent that is set up by the album’s opener. The one flaw in this album is that they put their best song first, which diminishes a good deal of the work that follows, despite it being excellent as well.

It is somewhat interesting to note that when I mentioned that the album had the same title but a different spelling to the well known Iced Earth album Mark immediately told me about how he and many others believe (I’m somewhat suspicious myself after noting the similarities in the album art) that they ripped the album concept and title from them. Although I can’t confirm this, I have noted that many I’ve met have since cited this as a reason for losing respect for Iced Earth and that they had lost a measure of credibility amongst the Florida scene at that time because of it. To this day I still enjoy Iced Earth’s music, but just remember that anyone who accuses this band of ripping off Iced Earth when encountering this album should be aware that they will sound equally as stupid as people who accuse Ayn Rand of ripping off George Orwell when she wrote Anthem (1984 was written 10 year later so the opposite was likely true).

Anyway, if you’ve encountered this band but not this album and you’re of the thrash/death persuasion, this is one to look for, and surprisingly I’ve found there to still be a good many copies of it floating around on various online CD stores. The thrash and death genres have been in the gutter for a good while and are just now starting to crawl back into prominence, and with luck many will rediscover this album and maybe it will finally have a chance to be as influential and revolutionary as it should have been in 1996, where it was quite ahead of it’s time.