From the bookend EPs Poisoned Blood in 2017 to Abhorrent Rapture in 2021, Witch Vomit has been a good and sometimes great band. I don’t own a ton of death metal on vinyl, but I do own everything the band released in that four-year window. OSDM is tricky to get right. You want it to adhere to a tradition of blastbeats, guttural vocals, and a generally quickened pace. The black letter law of OSDM doesn’t allow for a ton of wiggle room. Yet what a band does with the little wiggle room there is will cement most listeners’ interest level. Witch Vomit has largely thrown a bit of groove, tightness, and doom into that room and by and large it has worked extremely well.
All that now acknowledged, good bands often need a reset. Abhorrent Rapture put a bow on the band’s sound. The EP felt more celebratory than transitional. Every element—the grooves, the distorted riffs, the gurgles, the thrashy solos—felt like the improved, peak version of 2019’s Buried Deep in a Bottomless Grave. On just their second full-length, Witch Vomit had taken their weightier take on OSDM about as far as it could go, and if ever there were a time to pivot, that time would be now.
Funeral Sanctum by Witch Vomit
As the excellent, icy blue album cover by Matt Stikker would indicate, Funeral Sanctum is a measurable pivot. Across it’s almost thirty-one minutes—epic, by Witch Vomit standards—the band’s third album seemingly pulls from more disparate corners of the metalverse; Incantation and OSDM, of course, but also Dissection, Necrophobic, Sacramentum, Absu, and early black/death. Though I would have been happy with Abhorrent Rapture Pt. II, Funeral Sanctum is Witch Vomit skipping that transitional phase the 2021 EP could have been to arrive suddenly in a sound that feels very much their own.
Along with Stikker’s cover art, the first single “Blood of Abomination” signaled the band’s new direction. Not only does it typify the more immediate and intense approach, but it may also be the best song of the ten on the album. And at just over two minutes, it wastes little (read: no) time executing Witch Vomit’s new modus operandi. A burning, drill-like number, it perhaps most closely adheres to a traditional black/death scheme, though the brief groove at about the 1:30 mark is a minor deviation. As far as initial offerings go, I don’t think the band could have arrived at a better one than “Blood of Abomination.”
A good portion of Funeral Sanctum sounds like Witch Vomit’s take on The Nocturnal Silence. “Serpentine Shadows” and “Dominion of a Darkened Realm” may be the more obvious examples. Intentional or not, the strangely smooth and natural melding of melody and tension feels very early Necrophobic-like at times. Compliments to the chefs. Whatever the inspiration, this sound suits them well.
Without a single doubt, Funeral Sanctum is Witch Vomit’s finest (half) hour. A lesser, more risk-averse band would have recorded Abhorrent Rapture Pt. II. Kudos to Witch Vomit for not only trying something different, but succeeding in doing so.
