REVIEW: Methwitch - Indwell [2020]

Artist: Methwitch

Album: Indwell

            ThroughMethwitch’s impressive—albeit brief—duration as a project, creative mastermindCameron McBride has taken the listener on a dark tour of complicated, denseheavy music stylings. While the band’s first two offerings fit somewhat firmlyas a smoldering, blackened, grisly subdivision of brutal death metal, Piss felt immensely more spastic andsuffocating, taking hold of the listener like botulism, paralyzing them fromthe head downwards, totally disabling them. Now, mere days away from Indwell, listeners are forced to wonder—justwhat in the Hell has McBride cooked up this time?

            In short,it’s kind of like listening to what getting decapitated by a shotgun blast mustfeel like.

            Defined byeverything from brawl-inducing riffs to carefully organized chaos to chaos that…well,doesn’t even feel organized that it’s so chaotic and more, Methwitch’s Indwell is one of the most dense,terrifying, aggressive and haunting releases to set foot into the heavy musicarena, and while it most certainly isn’t for the faint of heart, it can’t beargued that there just isn’t anything as heavy—or even similar at all—to what McBride has crafted on Indwell.

            When I wastrying to sell Methwitch to someone on Twitter the other day, they asked mewhat kind of music it was—the genre, style, similar artists, you get it. At thetail end of four years of medical school (which followed four years ofbiochemistry training), and, honestly I’m not sure if I’ve ever been asked amore difficult question to answer succinctly. Indwell sounds sort of like someone minced up Ion Dissonance’s Cursed, sprinkled in some The IrishFront, Cradle of Filth, Cryptopsy, Dark Throne and maybe…some Slipknot? Thepoint is that Indwell blends elementsof contemporary grindcore, technical death metal, mathcore, black metal—the listgoes on—in a way that feels natural, and, of course, heavier than all Hell.From the eerie “Invoking Clauneck” to the spastic “Uninvited Guests” and “BurnVictim” through “Bed Full of Snakes” and the haunting closer “Exhale (LastBreath),” McBride’s instrumentation is (somehow) even more unpredictable anddiverse than it was on Piss, whilerefining the flow and structure of songs throughout Indwell to make the record feel less disjointed and more fluid. “BurnVictim,” alongside “Crimson Halo” and the record’s title track feature some ofthe most straightforward elements throughout the near-hour of devastating,oppressive heaviness that is Indwell.Here, McBride’s ten-ton guitar tones blare over cannon-like percussion whilebeing bolstered by gritty, grimy bass. Elsewhere—“Exhale (Last Breath)” forexample—things feel much more atmospheric and sludgy, with drawling, droningleads soaring over spacy drum patterns and sparse—albeit thick—bass. Betweenthese two extremes, songs like “Devil in the Corner” exist, channeling pure, distilledlate-2000s-grindcore-meets-late-2000s-mathcore chaos or “Ashen,” a song that brilliantlyblends heaviness and melancholy. While McBride does a profuse amount of sonicexperimentation, it all sticks and, in the process, provides a cohesive,bewildering and brutal example of metallic mastery.

            Vocally,McBride’s work on Indwell is just asterrifying as the house-of-horrors musicianship might have you think. Wheresome tracks (“Exhale (Last Breath)” comes to mind) feature singing that canbest be described as hair-raising, a great majority of the tracks on Indwell are home to styles of screaming,shrieking, growling and bellowing that—pardon my French—are just going make thelistener ask “what the fuck” untilthe record is done. “Burn Victim,” while being one of the more straight-forwardcuts on Indwell, also features someof the wildest vocal patterns—while “Devil in the Corner” showcases vocaltechniques and tones that, frankly, I didn’t think could be produced by ahuman. “Exhale (Last Breath)” sounds almost like a dirge, dreary and bleak inits vocal delivery—and while skeptic when I’d heard some Cradle of Filthcomparison, upon extensive review, I can hear it too, in a perverse, punishingfashion. McBride’s vocal work has underwent hugegrowth—both in technique and production—following Piss, smoothing the edges on what could otherwise be an altogethertoo-dense and too-abrasive record.

            PigeonholingMethwitch’s genre is an act of impossibility. Where some will call it slammingtechnical deathcore or something, and others will append a “blackened” and “technical”tag to some metallic subgenre, I’ve taken to just sort of referring to Indwell as “methcore.” Taking all theelements from mathcore’s more aggressive archetypal bands and tossing them intoa blender with metallic influence from melodic to murky, dismal funeral doomand more, Indwell is chaotic,crushing, creative and cruel to the unprepared listener. While there aredefinitely those who won’t be able to stomach a complete playthrough at any onetime, the fact remains that within Indwell’s57-minute run time, there is something for any fan of heavy music, and itblends so seamlessly that it isn’t hard to believe it’s all one band (or oneman, even)—it’s hard to believe that it all transitions so fluidly and feels socohesive.

9.5/10

For Fans Of: Ion Dissonance, Tower of Rome, Slipknot, Cradleof Filth, Dark Throne

By: Connor Welsh