Witching Chronicles: Exploring OREYEON’s The Grotesque Within
There are certain records that make you wonder why so many stoner bands insist on playing everything for twice as long as necessary. The Grotesque Within is one of them. OREYEON have squeezed seven tracks into a little over 36 minutes, and there’s enough happening here to keep things interesting without any lengthy detours into […]
Witching Chronicles: Exploring LORD ELEPHANT’s Ultra Soul
Lord Elephant come from Florence and have been making instrumental heavy psych since 2016. Their second full-length, Ultra Soul, is a seven-track slab of doom, blues, stoner rock and psychedelic wandering, released through Heavy Psych Sounds. The big difference from their debut Cosmic Awakening seems to be experience. The band have spent a lot of […]
Witching Chronicles: Exploring SOFTSUN’s Eternal Sunrise
SoftSun is one of those projects where the lineup already tells you roughly what to expect before the album even starts. Gary Arce’s desert-rock background colliding with Pia Isaksen’s colder, more atmospheric approach sounds like a strange combination on paper, but “Eternal Sunrise” rarely feels forced or overly conceptual. The record moves very naturally between […]
Witching Chronicles: Exploring GIÖBIA’s X-ÆON
I’ve been listening to X‑ÆON by Giöbia a lot lately. The French band released it in October 2025 on Heavy Psych Sounds Records. Right from the start, it grabs you with buzzing guitars and steady drums. The first track, “Voodoo Experience”, is fuzzy and slow, with the drums keeping a nice beat. It’s heavy but […]
Witching Chronicles: Exploring COSMIC REAPER’s Bleed The Wicked, Drown The Damned
COSMIC REAPER sounds like they finally stopped asking whether something works and just let it exist. Bleed the Wicked, Drown the Damned doesn’t try to guide you, doesn’t frame itself, doesn’t bother explaining why it’s slow or heavy or uncomfortable. It just sits there, looming. The stoner rock looseness from earlier days feels burned off; […]
Witching Chronicles: Exploring The DUSTED ANGEL’s This Side Of The Dirt
Some records hit you in the gut. Others in the teeth. This Side of the Dirt does both. First note drops and you feel it in your ribcage, like a van rolling over your spine. Dusted Angel didn’t come back to make a point – they came back because they couldn’t not. Fifteen years since […]
Witching Chronicles: Exploring the MARGARITA WITCH CULT’s Strung Out In Hell
Margarita Witch Cult’s Strung Out In Hell doesn’t 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 it’s meant to be: filthy, cracked, ringing with that factory clang that never leaves the bloodstream of this city. You can […]
Witching Riffs: Behind the Sound of Isaak
Born in 2011 from the ashes of Italian heavy rock four-piece Gandhi’s Gunn, it didn’t take long for ISAAK to sign a worldwide deal on US label Small Stone Records for the reissue of their ass-kicking debut album “The Longer The Beard The Harder The Sound” in June 2013. Oozing thundering riffs and raw energy, […]
Witching Chronicles: Exploring The ATOM JUICE’s Atom Juice
There’s something about hearing a band record straight from their rehearsal space that either exposes the cracks or lights the fuse. Atom Juice chose the fuse. You can hear the four walls breathing in the room – that wood-panel warmth, the hiss of amps pushed past polite conversation, cymbals that bloom out into the ether […]
Witching Chronicles: Exploring The ELECTRIC CITIZEN’s EC4
It’s not easy to return after seven years without sounding either out of breath or like you’re chasing ghosts. But Electric Citizen doesn’t trip over nostalgia or buckle under expectation – EC4 hits like a stoned cobra coiled under a velvet curtain. This is not a record that reintroduces the band with a polite handshake. […]