Do you want the perpendicular magic of obscure Floridian scientific death metal to take you into an extinguished state of bliss? Do you desire opaque fusion rhythms to altercate with your heartbeat causing it to skip steps? Do you dare forsake brutal mosh party antics in order to proceed to a mentally intricate level of personal and musical analysis? An affected bit of text there, I know, but it is impossible to avoid when commencing another run of Pat Ranieri‘s merely 26 minutes long meisterwerk, after half a minute of classical guitar intro cutting the crap and going for the throat with the initial solo in “Nosferatu”, a technical thrash abomination conceived in 1984. With such timeless expression, age hardly matters, but it’s worth mentioning because these guys were both thematically and musically far ahead Cynic‘s and Death‘s new age postures and theoretically just might have predated Atheist as well, who anyway beat them by a year in debut album release. Hellwitch‘s banquet table of speed metal, thrash and death metal can justifiedly be called non-organized, but that is exactly because the band shows no mercy in letting loose a sensual storm of associative significance, a swarm of noises including ridiculously angular solos and voices manipulated into cyborgian declarations. 
Despite the abstaining running time, a notable richness of taste and fullness of effort permeates this album, from the Renaissance touches in “Mordirivial Dissemination” to the speedcore foreshadowing of Deicide’s “Legion” which characterizes “Pyrophoric Seizure”. Thrash influence dominates in the use of short riffs and sparse punk influenced tremolos underneath elaborate and abstracted solos as in the tightly minimalistic spouting of syllables in lyrics that can hardly be called trivial even while there is an unjustified use of thesaurus; a frightening urgency of seeing a world falling into an apocalypse with the promise of demonic saviours permeates the text, gripping the heart of those not lured into false optimism by the pact society has instated upon an instinctively barbaric man. “Syzygial Miscreancy” manages to be metal from the mind of a zen priest and the mind of a panicking computer all at once – it hardly surprises that Antti Boman of Demilich has paid them tribute by guesting on their 2009 comeback album, which probably should be gotten under scrutiny somewhere in the future, before we all get blown by one catastrophe or another into this primordial plasma described (especially through Stravinskyian guitar work) by Hellwitch.
So speedcore is progressive grindcore? Where does it show in “Legion”? I’ve barely listened to Legion, so I am sorry for being rude and asking questions where I should have done the research myself.
Comment by Morbid_lad — June 27, 2010 @ 22:18
I’d say Napalm Death and Terrorizer invented grindcore rhythm -> Naked City and Carbonized merged it with fusion jazz -> Deicide’s “Satan Spawn the Caco Daemon” off “Legion” is the first time I hear this in mainstream death metal. But then again, there’s “Pyrophoric Seizure” a couple of years before…
Comment by Devamitra — June 28, 2010 @ 00:06
interesting. ive never explored this speedcore stuff. naked city doesnt sound like grindcore to me at all, reminds me more of a wanky jazz band. ill give them a few more listens unless someone else can confirm my theory. carbonized is the only band worth mentioning that fits the description of ‘progressive grindcore’ that i know of.
Comment by militantidiotcrusher — June 28, 2010 @ 04:27
Whatever you may decide to call it, the main point here is that while extreme speeds were initially used to alienate the music from rock and jazz mainstream, they made a full circle when the players gained expertise and were no longer producing just maiming noise. Today a mainstream listener probably even requires fast rhythms from his metal.
Comment by Devamitra — June 28, 2010 @ 11:20
i like this page i never found an incredible page!!!!greetings from mexico!
Comment by samara — September 7, 2010 @ 22:39
[...] Americas yield regional anomalies as diverse as Gorguts and Obliveon up in Québec to Atheist and Hellwitch down in Florida. And, wherever possible, Wagner takes great efforts to cite any intellectual [...]
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