Album Review: Miserate - Weaver Of Witchery
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
Mention of Norway and metal extremity would take most people to Black Metal, to church burnings and to all that unpleasantness in August 1993. Yet the country is home to more diverse takes on the extremes of music and doom death outfit, Miserate, is here to show Norwegian heavy metal doesn’t begin and end with corpse paint and Satan.
Gathering together five seasoned members of the country’s underground music scene, Miserate may be a new name, but the component parts can boast experience with the likes of Feather & Doom, Funeral, To Cast a Stone and The Black Lotus Project, among others. Their journey into melancholy began back in 2024 with the debut EP A Ritual of Doom and is followed by this sophomore platter, Weaver of Witchery.
It’s four tracks of misery made by a group of musicians inspired by the crushing doom of Peaceville Records’ early Nineties roster. Formative records from the likes of Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride, Anathema and Katatonia may be a world away from how some of those bands sound today, but the icy doom-laden riffs and gothic atmosphere was a welcome relief from the morass of mediocrity brought about by the Seattle Invasion of the time.
From the outset, it’s clear Miserate know their onions. Grip of Winter arrives with huge cascading guitars courtesy of Marcus Granlien and Kristian Sigland, who had worked together on The Black Lotus Project as far back as 2010. The atmosphere created is as icy as any of the nation’s blackest metals, its grim bleakness adding an extra layer of darkness and despondence.
The EP’s title track is a little more upbeat, more in the vein of Novembers Doom or early Swallow the Sun, while still maintaining the raw and sometimes demonic. Reverb-heavy guitars colour the closing moments, competing with the sound of lashing rain. Behind the Veil of Death slows the pace into an imposing monument to misery. A mid-song descent into melancholy almost reaches a point of singularity and the journey out is hard and fraught. To Cast a Shadow drummer, Kent Helset, hammers the kit like he’s creating an Orc army in the depths of Mordor; Shraphead bassist Will Fossheim is unsung in his bridging of the gap between guitars and percussion.
Final track, The Endless Light / Hindenburg begins with an ancient scene, as though dawn was breaking over a perfectly still lake. Musically it’s cold and atmospheric, with haunting guitars, leading to a crushing conclusion. Gothic elements give way to a hypnotic, even psychedelic, close, making you wander where those twenty-four minutes have gone?
Miserate play Weaver of Witchery to perfection: all the elements that make a successful doom death record are here and are laid out by a group of musicians who not only understand their assignment but have an abiding passion for the material. Vocalist Kenneth O. Grimelid voices the record with the prescribed combinations of guttural growls and tortured cries, morosely narrating the voyage through misery.
Engineered by Karl Daniel Lidén, who’s also worked on projects by Draconian, Bloodbath and Katatonia gives you an idea of the quality involved in Weaver of Witchery. The slow, heavy riffs and overwhelming melancholy come front and centre as Miserate announce themselves as a new and exciting voice in modern doom death.
