Haunted Crucifix - Booze Witch

Haunted Crucifix

Booze Witch

by Ricardo Casagrande at 16 March 2022, 3:35 PM

HAUNTED CRUCIFIX is one man hailing from Volos, Greece. The album, titled Booze Witch, was released through the Ukrainian record label Loneravn in November 2021. With elements of Doom metal and Stoner metal, as if they got together and had a bad acid trip, seems influenced by the old school psychedelic rock bands from the early 70’s. Grab your booze, enjoy the ritual, and hail satan is what we are told with this experimental album, and that is what we shall do.

The album starts off with the track “Black Cult” and it does have an occult feel to it, and is a very slow burn. The whole song has a sacrificial ceremony feeling that does have a creeping, crawling eeriness to it, that is complemented well with the keys. Though it does lack a bit of the heaviness that you would find with most Doom metal, it will make up for it with the unsettling tones. It would work nicely in most horror movie soundtracks for sure. The next track is “Booze Witch” and it picks up almost exactly where the last song left off. The flow is identical, and you start to understand that this is what you are getting from this album. Half-way in it does pick up the pace with a catchy riff and some solo guitar work that changes the feel of the song and allows for the drums to come more to life. “Acid Ritual” takes on the small state of euphoria that the ending of the last song left off, and is more of an upbeat track. The sludgy guitar riff dominates the whole way through, and is played with heavy effects. The keys do at the end take over the song and does take the song into a Stoner music vibe.

“Dawn of the Beast” takes you back down the sludgy, synth road, with trippy elements. The drums are the most alive in this song at the first, more so than on most of the album with some timely rolls. The last half of the song changes into a psychedelic stoner flow that gets taken up a notch with the accompanying track “Join the Circle”. This is the one song on this instrumental album that I think could really benefit with some vocals. This is the more free flowing track on the album and has a cool riff that gradually seems to increase with intensity as the track goes on. The song is more straight rocking than effects and keys and is a pleasant change of pace to the album. It all comes to a close with the song ”Holy Hallucination” and again takes on the cult feeling but this time with a bit of a kick in the ass. The drums have more rhythm in which everything else falls in line with up until the song falls back into the dragging, effects filled music
that at times sounds like if SOCIAL DISTORTION dropped their tempo by half. The track was good, but ending back on that pace kind of put a damper on it for me.

Like I previously stated, most of the album is a slow burn. Maybe a little too much for me. That being said, it has nothing against the music, that does have that creepy, goosebumps effect at times and would compliment any old school sci-fi horror movie. The tempo is very casual throughout most of the album and when it does change, it is well received. Production wise, it seems well done, there is not anything that gets drowned out at times due to the sludgy guitar parts, or anything that seems to be lacking to any degree.

Songwriting: 5
Musicianship: 5
Memorability: 5
Production: 5