Witch Club Satan

Black metal is many things, and for me it's also a punk thing. It's rebellion, it's noise, it's a spit in the eye of the beholder. It's not just that, and I think it's great that many artists pushed the genre in some other directions in the last decades: I like that too. But when I found Witch Club Satan it was like being reminded, all of a sudden, what was it all about. There's the side of me that wants to listen to Gaahl sitting in Grieghallen sipping wine, but there's also the old kid who wants to listen to something that begs to differ.

And Witch Club Satan definitely begs to differ. It's that punkish black metal at its finest. It's so proudly punk that in fact it goes everything that we've come to expect from a genre that has historically been dominated by male, right-wing, techinical artist. Which Club Satan are definitely raw, definitely on the left side of the barricade, and definitely female. Black metal must disturb, and from what I've seen, given their characteristics, they are able to disturb even some of the genre's listeners. Which is good: black metal definitely is not for gatekeeping neckbeards: we all came here because we looked for a place for different people, and this band, and this album, is an harbour for different people.

The album is good. It is quite varied. "Mother Sea" is beautiful. "Hex" is weirdly disturbing. "Black Metal Is Krig" is a statement that plays with the genre's tropes. The topics are definitely on point: it's a celebration of that wild, underground femininity that bleeds, protects and breeds. It's not an elegant thing, it's like Euripides's Bacchantes. And even though it's very noisy, it's quite refreshing to play in the living room. Even the artwork is great. It misses something on the tecnical side: not all the tracks are easy to recognize, the sound is very emotional but it could still benefit from a more technical play, that eventually will come in future albums, I suppose.

We definitely need more screaming naked ladies in the scene, and even outside of it. I strongly believe that this is what the genre needed, and I hope to hear much more of the band in the future.

Give it a listen here --> https://witchclubsatan.bandcamp.com/album/witch-club-satan