Witch Fever unleashes new levels of artistry and emotion in ‘FEVEREATEN’
The band’s second album is full of loud emotion and musical experimentation, all revolving around religious themes.
Photo: Frank Fieber
Manchester’s Witch Fever have released their second full studio album, FEVEREATEN, along with a European tour stretching across Autumn. The album fuses sounds and emotions as ways to voice dealing with religious trauma that members of the band experience. Throughout the album, popular biblical phrases and stories are intertwined with heavy beats, screams and more romantic lyrics to create feelings of unease.
The album’s opener, DEAD TO ME, combines sultry and simple verses and a chorus that screams the title phrase as Alisha Yarwood’s guitar and Annabelle Joyce’s drums alternate between slamming fits of sound and silence. At the song’s end, singer Amy Walpole is left screaming “Dead to me / Dead to me / Dead to me / Dead to me” as if punching a wall. The track opens up the door for emotional vulnerability in the form of music that’s fast-paced and easy to lose yourself in.
DEAD TO ME is followed immediately by FINAL GIRL, which, along with being a perfectly placed phrase and concept idea that I wish I had thought of, begins with an 80s-inspired synth intro, thus suggesting that the song itself will take inspiration from the title’s association with 80s horror. With lines like “I’m alive” and “I survive” being repeated in the song’s verses, the band manages to relate the idea of a “final girl” surviving a horror film to making it out of common negative real-life scenarios, like religious trauma, a better person.
The album’s recent single, THE GARDEN, switches out the 80s horror themes of the previous track with the biblical imagery that will remain constant. References to apples in the song’s chorus allow the band to once again draw connections between stories and reality. This time, it’s “taking what’s mine” instead of what others feed you.
NORTHSTAR, the album’s fourth track, calms down slightly from the tightly-packed themes and hard-hitting lines of the album’s beginning. The song turns the image of the North Star on its head, turning it into a signal of loneliness and directionlessness rather than a signal of safety.
The bridge of this track puts its pre-chorus in slow motion: one of the most unexpected moments of the album and one of my favourites almost entirely for how unexpected and original it is. For only a second everything slows and the emotion catches up before barreling forward once again.
The fifth track, DRANK THE SAP, has a falsely serene tone, with the lyric “holding my tears at bay” signaling a sound that’s as close as punk can get to enchanted and somber. DRANK THE SAP is followed by SAFE, which refers to blind trust rather than genuine protection. SAFE connects the previous tracks and rounds out the calmer portion of the album with its initial heavy tempo bleeding into a violin solo outro.
The album’s title track, FEVEREATEN, opens the second half of the album, using the line “I’m right on the edge” to transition back into the almost aggressive expression of emotion shown in the first two tracks. BURN TO HIT follows, continuing the religious themes present throughout the album with mentions of salvation and repentance being used as justification for cruel behavior.
SEE YA NEXT TUESDAY also takes on a unique sonic element so far unseen on the album. At the end of the track, the vocals continue to scream, but are covered, turning quiet and muffled before being brought back up to full volume right as the song is ending. Elements like these at the end of multiple tracks on the album give just enough of a taste into the creative minds and skill of the band to entice listeners further.
REPRISE opens with a simplistic electric guitar, which again opens up into a much larger and louder melody. The track’s chorus is a mixture of synths and piercing, high-pitched sounds, steadily thrumming while Amy sings of being “on her knees for God”.
The album ends with AMBER and I SEE IT. AMBER takes on a much more pop-centric sound, revolving around soaking up the scraps of attention of an untrustworthy romantic interest.
The album closes with I SEE IT. Its opening of echoed vocals and melody, like a clock ticking and chiming, gives it a comparatively creepier feeling than the rest of the album, knocking the listener slightly off balance right at the last second. The track brings the brief moments of experimentation from the previous tracks into the forefront to close the album on a note of pure artistic expression, taking the form of a wide variety of musical sounds.
The album expands on the punk genre to include moments of anger, pain, hope and sounds that are much more eerie and melancholic than would be expected. These turns make it a must-listen for fans of experimental punk and music that expands past its typical genre.
FEVEREATEN is out now via Music For Nations / Sony.
