Witching Hour are not a band I discovered yesterday. I have been following these Germans since their early days, when they were still building their name in the underground and their records were coming through Evil Spell. I actually interviewed the band for Posercorpse zine back then, so there is a bit more history between me and Witching Hour than simply having their records sitting on a shelf. I was buying their first press vinyl directly through Evil Spell as the releases came out, and the band even sent me a patch of their first album, which is still sewn onto my battle jacket today. Those are the kind of things I remember when a band resurfaces years later with a new album, because you are not approaching it as some new name that suddenly appeared in 2026. You have already seen where they came from and watched the whole thing develop.
Formed in 2006 in Rehlingen, Saarland, Witching Hour originally built their sound around that dirty German Blackened Thrash Metal approach, and ‘Rise Of The Desecrated’ from 2009 remains the record that takes me straight back to those early years. Released through Evil Spell, it had that rawness I was looking for at the time, with the old German Thrash Metal influence running through the riffs while the Black Metal side kept everything rough and sinister. Jan Hirtz handled vocals and guitars, Sascha Bastian played lead guitar, Marco Justinger was on bass and backing vocals, and Simon Wender handled drums. There was nothing particularly polished about the way they approached the material, and that was exactly what made the record work for me.
Coming back to Witching Hour now with ‘Descending… Where Time Has Ceased To Exist’ is interesting because the band have obviously moved a long way since those early records, but they have not simply thrown away everything that made them Witching Hour in the first place. The Blackened Thrash Metal foundation is still somewhere underneath the songs, but the Heavy Metal side has become much stronger, the guitar work has opened up and the songwriting is far more patient. There is more room for melody and atmosphere, and the songs are no longer dependent on constant speed to keep things moving. You can hear a band that has had many years to develop its ideas rather than one trying to recreate the sound of its first album.
The current lineup has Jan Hirtz on vocals and guitars, Sascha Bastian on lead guitars and drums, and Marco Justinger on bass and backing vocals. Sascha also recorded, mixed and mastered the new album at Journey Into Eternity Studios. That is quite a different setup from the early Witching Hour lineup, particularly with Sascha now behind the drums, but the core of the band has remained remarkably stable. Jan, Sascha and Marco have been the central figures throughout most of the band’s history, and that continuity is probably one reason the newer material still feels recognisably like Witching Hour despite the changes in songwriting.
The six tracks here run for just over forty-three minutes, beginning with the instrumental ‘Descending…’ and then moving into ‘Where Time Has Ceased To Exist’. From there the band gradually open up the songs rather than immediately throwing everything at you. ‘Profane Resurrection Of A Presumed Dead’, ‘The Graves Yearn For The Dead’ and ‘A Night Under A Crimson Moons Lament’ show just how much more developed the arrangements have become, with the guitars carrying more melody and the songs moving through different moods instead of staying locked into one approach. The eleven-minute ‘…And Then Came The Flames’ gives them even more room to stretch things out, and that is probably the clearest example of how different this Witching Hour is from the band I interviewed for Posercorpse all those years ago.
Jan Hirtz is still very much at the centre of the band’s identity. His vocals have that rough character that worked so well with the early Black/Thrash Metal material, while his guitar work has become more expansive as the songwriting has developed. Sascha Bastian has probably undergone the most obvious change in terms of his role within the band, moving from lead guitar in the early lineup to drums while also handling the recording, mixing and mastering of the new album. His lead guitar background is still important because the solos and melodic passages do not feel like decorations added on top of the riffs; they are part of how these longer songs actually develop. Marco Justinger has remained on bass and backing vocals since the beginning, giving the band another important link between the early material and what they are doing now.
There is also something to be said for the amount of time Witching Hour have taken between records. Their previous full-length, ‘…And Silent Grief Shadows The Passing Moon’, came out in 2018, so this is an eight-year gap before the arrival of ‘Descending… Where Time Has Ceased To Exist’. That long period seems to have given the band room to let the songwriting develop instead of simply trying to keep up a release schedule. The 2018 album was already showing a more atmospheric and developed side of Witching Hour, and the new record pushes that further without completely cutting the connection to their Black/Thrash Metal beginnings.
That is why this album hits differently for me compared with someone discovering Witching Hour for the first time. I remember the early records, I remember doing that Posercorpse interview, I remember ordering the first press vinyl through Evil Spell and I still have that first album patch on my battle jacket. Those things give the new album a different context. I can hear the distance between the Witching Hour I was interviewing back then and the band standing behind this record now, but I can also hear the same basic character underneath it.
‘Descending… Where Time Has Ceased To Exist’ is not ‘Rise Of The Desecrated’ Part Two, and I am glad it isn’t. After twenty years as a band, Witching Hour have every right to let the songwriting grow beyond the raw Blackened Thrash Metal attack that first put them on my radar. The Heavy Metal, Speed Metal, Thrash Metal and NWOBHM elements are now much more integrated into the compositions, and there is considerably more attention given to atmosphere, melody and longer song structures. For me, the real pleasure is hearing that development with the early records and memories still sitting in the background.
When I look at that old Witching Hour patch sewn into my battle jacket, it is hard not to think about how long ago that period actually was. I was interviewing them for Posercorpse, buying their vinyl directly through Evil Spell and following a young German band that was still finding its place in the underground. Now, in 2026, ‘Descending… Where Time Has Ceased To Exist’ finds the same band much further down the road, with a considerably broader musical vocabulary but without losing the connection to those early years. For me, that makes this more than just another new Witching Hour release. It is another chapter in a band I have been following for a very long time.
