Review Summary: All Them Witches blends elements of blues, psychedelic, and stoner rock into an atmospheric, well-composed album.
Drawing from influences of blues, psychedelic, and stoner rock, All Them Witches’
Lightning At The Door is a masterclass in atmosphere and songwriting. Each track flows seamlessly into the next, with surreal spoken-word opener
Funeral For a Great Drunken Bird shifting into the stomping, thrashing
When God Comes Back before
The Marriage of Coyote Woman slinks sly and mournful over the soundscape. The performances, though understated, are nonetheless perfect; each and every instrument is exactly where it should be: from the quiet, restless, at times jazz-inspired drums to a guitar alternating between the thick chords of stoner rock and the surgical precision of the blues. Vocalist Michael Parks Jr. manages to be everything at once – a prophet foretelling something monstrous and unimaginable on
When God Comes Back, a sly, winking romantic on
Charles William, or even a man simply muttering absentmindedly to himself on the surrealistic, monolithic closer
Mountain. Rarely do albums so distinctly convey a time and place as
Lightning At The Door does. I don’t often listen to albums in order or all the way through, but for
Lightning At The Door I make an exception – this is less an album than it is a landscape, and everything is the way it is for a reason.
