Margarita Witch Cultās Strung Out In Hell doesnāt play nice. It drags you by the hair straight into the furnace and keeps you there until your skin blisters. This is Birmingham metal the way itās meant to be: filthy, cracked, ringing with that factory clang that never leaves the bloodstream of this city. You can hear the ghosts of Sabbath thick in the smoke, and these guys donāt hide it – they lean hard into that worship, bowing at the altar with every riff and letting the feedback ring like church bells cracked in half.
The record doesnāt move in straight lines. One second itās swamp-crawl doom, the next itās all teeth and thrash, chasing you down an alley with a broken bottle. Riffs lurch and buckle, tempos flip without warning. Itās not tight, itās not clean, and thatās exactly the point. Thereās menace in the looseness, a sense that the whole thing could cave in at any moment. And when it does, they just laugh and light another fire.
It doesnāt sound like a second album. It sounds like a band possessed, wringing every last shriek and squeal out of their gear. Thereās nothing ācareer-buildingā here. This is noise for the sake of noise, riffs stacked on riffs until the walls shake. Some bands polish their rough edges by album two. Margarita Witch Cult sharpened theirs and aimed them straight at the jugular.
Listening to Strung Out In Hell feels like being trapped at the afterparty nobody survives. Volume maxed, lights flickering, somebody speaking in tongues in the corner. Itās ugly, itās mean, and itās alive.
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Released by Heavy Psych Sounds on July 18th
