Lots of substance but not much style
It is often I reflect on the days of gigging the pubs and clubs, occasionally getting paid pittance for playing in front of just the bar staff. The money left over after petrol and burgers, goes towards studio time to record the next demo. It is the way most fledgling bands operate, a way to earn those musical stripes and hopefully give you a story or two to tell. Sadly however, most bands who collect enough cash to record a three or four track demo, end up booking a studio with an engineer or producer who has little idea what sound the band are after. And the 'whole day' you've booked with him/her is never enough time for him/her to understand. BattleWitch remind me of those days gone by. They are a band who have some good ideas but are let down by an over obvious demo-quality recording.
In my experience renting studio time usually means getting to the studio early, then waiting four hours whilst the drums are being tuned and set up. Because of this time consuming process the rest of the instruments are somewhat rushed. This leads to recording the spine of the demo in a live scenario, with a few vocal overdubs and solos added later. Sometimes this gives the demo a certain energy, a rawness rarely captured on professional recordings, but there's a reason why bands take months to record and mix an album, and that is 'to make it sound good'. If you want something to sound great and make the listener to keep coming back for more, then the band in question should treat the recording with a little TLC. Ensure the guitars are powerful and tracked, the drums aren't boomy and the bass too woolly.
'Fyredroyde' suffers from the above problem. The bass doesn't sound too bad but the guitars have that rushed 'stick the microphone anywhere in front of the amp' feel about them. They are also only in mono which causes the guitar parts to sound messy and incomprehensible, especially at the start of this EP's title track. Andrew Maslen's vocals have a little too much reverb on them, which loses their richness and sets them too far apart from the rest of the band. The drums do sound a little too overpowering at times especially when Kev Sibley plays a busy section, most notably on 'Children of the Wytch'. I feel that it's worth a band taking a .wav file of the drums from the studio and piecing the rest of the recording together at home or in a more controlled environment. Many FX units, and indeed FX on music programs, contain an amp simulator, enabling a direct line input to sound fairly chunky. It's certainly cheaper and less messy than rushing to mic up a guitar amp, and you can really work on a sound that works for the band.
The reason I've droned on for three paragraphs about the sound quality is because underneath it all BattleWitch is a very promising band, and I'd love to hear them get better. BattleWitch fit nicely in between Black Sabbath and Cathedral, a band that could find a niche in both the doom and stoner metal genres. All four tracks on this disc are of a good quality and different from each other, a trait sadly lacking in a lot of today's music. I'm not going to go overboard on praise, (unlike the quotes on their press release) because I think there's a danger of piling it on too thick (which breeds complacency). BattleWitch have a lot of work to do on their style and presentation (For instance, creating their own unique logo rather than using the chiller font in Word), but I can't deny they have a good ear for a tune. 'Fyredroyde' is a classic metal offering, but could have been so much more with a little more care and attention. Keep you ears out for them. www.myspace.co.uk/battlewitch