Vampiric themes have been all the rage in recent years, indeed, within underground Black Metal it is currently the most popular subject. The times that only Black Funeral was involved in this is already decades behind us. New on this front is the American Vampiric Solitude, a one-man act of an illustrious musician who goes by the name of Bone Witch.
After a short and moody intro (‘Solitude’), this demo plunges into an excellent piece of low-fi Black Metal. The atmosphere is set by the production, which is at once cold and vicious – this is exactly the kind of sound this kind of Black Metal needs. Bone Witch’s hypnotic riffs and icy screeches make the whole thing even colder and give musical shape to the band name. The past few years have been good for fans of raw and low-fi Black Metal, but not everything has the same quality and the online competitions for who has the most limited edition tapes and vinyl in their collection has not had purely positive effects on the scene either. However, this three-track ‘Demo I’ by Vampiric Solitude is indeed a quality and valuable addition to a genre that is currently in danger of saturating very quickly.
