All the best tunes belong to the Devil, and Portland’s bastard triptych Bewitcher have returned to take back rock n’ roll in Baphomet’s name. Spell Shock, the speed demons’ latest, raises Bewitcher's horns and pushes their extremes straight into the fiery red. Says bassist A. Magus on the unholy genesis of the new album: “Spell Shock is the product of playing 130 shows in a row and then going straight into writing and recording,” Indeed, Bewitcher's unrelenting post-Covid-era tour-grind for their 2021’s Cursed Be Thy Kingdom, alongside the likes of Municipal Waste, Goatwhore, Cavalera and Exhumed became the fuel for their finest moment to date. Spell Shock lives up to its title. It’s riffs, filth and fury at their most demonic and rebellious.

 

When searching for a producer for Spell Shock, Bewitcher found a kindred spirit in Bewitcher fan, Lars Frederiksen. A like-minded badass, largely known for his guitar-wielding presence in Rancid and Old Firm Casuals, Frederiksen’s passion for metal and punk was an unexpected, but natural fit. “It was weird case of the stars aligning,” says frontman Mateo von Bewitcher. “At first, we were kind of like, ‘Huh?’ But literally from the first conversation, it turned into a total no-brainer.” Lars Frederiksen himself is equally stoked on the results: “It’s the best record I’ve ever produced for one of the best bands in the world.”

 

Says Magus of their experience with vaunted producer: “[Lars’] knowledge of heavy metal, black metal and thrash – as well as punk, is vast and extreme. It was definitely a match made in hell.” From Spell Shock’s pummeling first invocation, “Starfire Maelstrom”, Bewitcher stake a bloody claim on making a metal record that’s equally classic and contemporary. In classic Bewitcher fashion, the trio is hardly sheepish (or goat-ish) about waxing on the dark side as inspiration in their classic metal quest. “[‘Starfire Maelstrom’] is full of apocalyptic, speed demon vibes and imagery taken from the worst of current events that only get more apocalyptic as time goes by,” says Von Bewitcher of Spell-Shock’s lead missive. “It’s the feeling you get from “Fight Fire with Fire” on [Metallica’s] Ride the Lightning. It’s immediate how it feeds into themes of human destruction and war, but also has cosmic elements. It’s a classic album opener.”

 

With Bewitcher, classic is key. “We kept coming back to classic heavy metal records for inspiration,” says Magus. “What we got was our take on classic 80’s metal records using the tools we have today.” The band also credits engineer and mixer Chris Dugan, best known for his work with Green Day (Yes, Green Day, but listen to those guitars!), for nailing Spell Shock’s energized rawness. “We’ve always tried to be an old school band, without being or sounding like a retro or trad metal band,” adds Von Bewitcher.

 

Songs like the title track or “Out Against the Law” are rough-riding anthems while “Dystopic Demonolatry” blasts as hard as anything from the band’s self-titled 2016 debut or 2019’s Venom-worshipping classic Under the Witching Cross. “The intent of this album was to take all the elements of Bewitcher and throw them into the cauldron,” says Magus. “Let’s bring back some of the first record vibe, but let’s also have some of the rock elements from Cursed Be Thy Kingdom, while broadening the sound. It’s a silver bullet of a record.”

 

From its eye-grabbing-and-gouging artwork by Italian horror maestro Solo Macello, to songs like the haunting “We Die in Dust”, to the epic closing track “Ride of the Iron Fox” (“That’s Bewitcher's Dokken song!” laughs A. Hunter.) Spell Shock is Bewitcher at their most evolved and most devastatingly primal. “We wanted it to be an album experience,” says drummer A. Hunter. “Imagine King Diamond’s Abigail in terms of atmosphere merged with the energy of AC/DC’s High Voltage.”

 

Bewitcher's diabolical tale begins in 2013 when longtime friends and collaborators, Von Bewitcher and Magus gathered elements and inspirations from the likes of Motorhead and Bathory to concoct the Satanic Panic and Wild Blasphemy demos (collected for 2023’s Deep Cuts & Shallow Graves compilation of demos and unreleased tracks). With early anthems like “Speed til You Bleed” or “Too Fast for the Flames”, Bewitcher snared a rabid cult with their assault of insanely catchy riffmongery and grimly fiendish wordplay.  By 2015, they had a leather jacket and dark sunglass-clad touring lineup ready and hit the road, to never look back. Touring became non-stop, the three-piece becoming a seasoned live band owning stages across North America and Europe as they spread the gospel of their self-dubbed “Black Magick Metal”.

 

From Hell to eternity, Bewitcher's blasphemous mission remains unfailingly the same - playing razor sharp, unforgettable heavy metal from festival stages to the darkest recesses of small clubs across the world. “We still have to earn it every night,” says Magus. “We’re going to go grind it as hard as we can and win over as many people as we can. That’s Bewitcher and that’s the essence of heavy metal itself.”