Review Summary: A vicious cut of underground Pacific Northwest black metal history
Before rocketing to relative fame with Uada, Jake Superchi spent more than 15 years toiling away with his brother in a lesser-known band called Ceremonial Castings. Birthed in the mid-90s across the Columbia River from Portland, they called their sound Bewitching Black Metal, which aside from the musical direction, is certainly adept. That's because you practically need a grimoire to decipher their discography, which is absolutely loaded with re-recorded and remastered albums and confusingly labeled demos that are for all intents and purposes full-length releases.
With that in mind, we’ll call “Into the Black Forest of Witchery” the band’s debut since that’s what they seem to label it as. The “official” full-length album was originally released in 2004, but this debut itself was a re-recorded version of a 2002 demo. But good luck finding the 2004 version, because the edition available for purchase on Bandcamp is the 2008 remaster of the re-recorded album (complete with four extra songs - one original and three covers. For this review we’ll be working with the original nine songs).
But even before the 2002 demo of “Into the Black Forest of Witchery,” the band had released several full-length demo albums. In fact, most of the band’s discography seemingly started out as full-length demos before being re-recorded or remastered, or locked away behind a Bandcamp paywall, even for listening, with the exception of a fully re-recorded compilation album, a short EP and a remastered version of one their excellent “Salem” album. Many of the early demos just straight up aren't for sale by the band.
It really makes you wonder what’s going on. Superchi has said in interviews that he’s never been happy with how their earlier recordings sounded, but locking away what is a damn strong discography, especially a black metal discography, because of poor fidelity seems a little absurd, and a shame.
So, by this point you’re probably wondering if it’s even worth it forking over $10 for a digital copy of “Into the Black Forest of Witchery” or tracking down a stream on YouTube. I’m here to tell you yes, it absolutely is, because this album showcases basically everything I want out of a black metal album. It's brutal, atmospheric and downright nasty.
Maybe the tentativeness comes by way USBM and Pacific Northwest regional black metal being relative underdogs when they were starting out. Ceremonial Castings themselves were early practitioners within the region's scene, albeit focusing on the occult and witchcraft instead of the nature-centered paganism that would later become a regional hallmark. Their 1997 demo and later release, “13 Roses," saw the band trafficking in a gothic-heavy brand of black metal with weighty doses of the symphonic and atmospheric.
By the time 2002 rolled around, and the band released the first iteration of “Into the Black Forest of Witchery,” they’d honed in on the formula that they would largely carry with them for the rest of their career. It’s a rollicking and intense amalgamation of frigid black metal tremolo picking, a mix of throat-shredding screams and guttural death metal vocals, symphonic synths and some straight up death metal riffage, all punctuated by moments of gothic beauty.
Take for instance the dichotomy found between ‘Frostseasongoddess’ which spends most of its time playing with frigid blackened atmospheric metal with some folk instrumentation, only to dive headfirst into a lush downtempo acoustic and synth portion to close out the track. But that relative peace doesn’t last long as the frantic picking of “Valley Of Snakes” kicks in the door with its burbling death metal vocals and epic, lumbering riffs. It’s one of my favorite songs on here, and a strong contender for my favorite Ceremonial Castings songs. “Come Unto Fire” is another death-heavy song that’s a pure riff fest.
That said, much of the album is spent on the more symphonic side. Take the title track as an example which finds the band pumping out six minutes of pure synthy goodness, complete with some rare gothic vocals (especially interesting considering Uada’s new album is basically a gothic acoustic record, you can hear the roots of that in early Ceremonial Castings). It all works brilliantly. Even the two instrumental and purely atmospheric tracks, “Heaven Falls Upon My Wings” and “Lunacy Becomes Us” are done with such conviction and intensity that they don’t feel like filler.
On the whole “Into the Black Forest of Witchery” is an exceptional black metal album, which is why it's even more of a shame that the band has chosen to make it relatively difficult to give it a listen. As far as I’m concerned, it’s their best album, with “Salem” and “Cthulhu” nipping at its heels. It’s a record that can certainly stand on its own, and it would be fantastic if Ceremonial Castings allowed it to do just that because this to my mind is an underground USBM classic.
