Throes of Ire - Funeral for a Witch
Funeral for a Witch is a concept LP about the life of Margaret Aitken, a woman who was forced to confess to witchcraft under torture but was spared when she agreed to help the witch hunters by outing other witches. The story goes that she sent many innocents to their deaths by fingering them as witches - being a witch herself, she’d know another when she saw one, or so the logic went. In the end, the guilt she carried around with her eventually consumed her and drove her mad. The truth that she was a fraud eventually came out, whereupon she was burned at the stake for her crimes. On paper, this sounds pretty interesting. It was the main reason I wanted to check out this record, in fact. In practice, though, the Doom/Death Metal that Throes of Ire sets this story to isn’t very exciting. The song structures are pretty simplistic, the riffing and pacing are ploddingly slow and the songs are overly long. The lyrics, though, are great. The story is interesting and it’s well written. The delivery and the music, on the other hand, turn a rather riveting read into an exercise in drudgery. Only on “Solitary Mourning” (the last track on the LP) does the pace kick up and things get interesting - but you first have to get through eight minutes of music similar to the other songs, which were lethally boring. Even that doesn’t last very long, though. Sadly, Funeral for a Witch lacks the kind of diversity and dynamics in the songwriting that it really needed in order to make a concept piece like this work. Though this is their second release, Throes of Ire still needs a lot of development before they’re ready for the big leagues. The lyrics are up there already, but everything else is severely lacking. The songwriting is simplistic - which isn’t a sin - but simplistic structures get tedious when you stretch things out over ten to twenty minutes. The songs needed something to break up the monotony in the worst way. Even the vocals needed diversity. The only style employed on this album is the standard Death Growl, but it was delivered without passion. The vocals were dry and lifeless, which, when blended with the already dull music, did nothing to spice things up. They did the equivalent of adding dull and tasteless oatmeal to dull and tasteless oatmeal. All you got in the end was more dull and tasteless oatmeal. Though there’s a lot of improvement necessary in the sound of Throes of Ire, I hope these guys can figure things out. They have some interesting stories to tell, but their musical abilities haven’t caught up with their imaginations yet.
(6) Comment(s)
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William said:
Throes Of Ire are a doom band. I repeat, a DOOM band.
Koji Kabuto said:
I’ve heard this and it’s boring as fuck. Quality Doom has layers of sound. This does not. It’s simply uninteresting and a bush league effort.
Steve Wright said:
Da fuq? This is an awesome EP. Love this band.
James ThroesOfIre said:
We have posted a teaser to our latest EP here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iA66f0cT0s&feature=youtu.be
James said:
Thank you for the review. Be on the lookout for our upcoming EP, The Mourners Cairn.
yousuf said:
This album Margaret Aitken, the great story of Balwearie witches. After pleading guilty under torture, the Commission pointed out that witch witches throughout the country in exchange for their life hunter aid offered. During the four-month period, after the Aitken Commission has been identified by his was visited several parts of Scotland and detained a number of people put to the test and burned at the stake. Aitken is finally driven to madness by guilt and haunting looks of my brain can not be killed by the hands of innocent girls. She has proven to be a fraud and is burned in the game itself. (Our interpretation of this story)
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