The Wytches count Leonard Cohen and Black Sabbath among their primary influences and these three English dudes are dark indeed. But their heaviness is offset by an, ahem, bewitching catchiness and the occasional burst of roiling surf-rock. Heard below, “Wire Frame Mattress” opens as a grungy, metallic slog before picking up steam, stalling out, and surging forth like an early White Stripes song made somehow both scrappier and heftier than the original article. “You sit there and laugh while my dignity collapses,” Kristian Bell literally hisses, and then we’re treated to a bout of blackened Dick Dale wildness as the entire thing careens toward a head-banging finish. Throw up the devil horns and feel this band’s pain. The album arrives in May via Partisan.
