WitchTit: Intoxicating Lethargy [Self-released; Mar. 12] | Suppressive Fire: Invasion [Self-released; Mar. 15]
This week marks a full year of silent stages. As the COVID-19 pandemic upended life worldwide, the live music industry was hit particularly hard.
In the Triangle, as in many other parts of the country, the pandemic has caused venues to shutter permanently. When The Maywood announced its permanent closure in late January, the Raleigh venue became the latest casualty in a still-growing list of concert halls nationwide that shuttered due to the pandemic. The marquee that once regularly bore the names of hard rock and heavy metal bands bitterly bid adieu, proclaiming “COVID/Cooper Killed This Club.”
The economic reality of a year without shows—and with scant relief—was too much to overcome, even with financial help from a GoFundMe campaign and a separate benefit compilation featuring 25 of the local bands who have called The Maywood and its adjacent practice spaces home.
Indeed, the club had long been a linchpin for heavy music in the Triangle. While the rehearsal spaces remain in operation, the venue itself stands silent. But as much as live music has suffered, music itself has endured. And two thrilling new releases from thrash metal act Suppressive Fire and doom metal band WitchTit make the case that Raleigh’s perennially strong heavy metal scene is not just surviving, but thriving.
Though disparate in sound, both WitchTit’s full-length debut Intoxicating Lethargy and Suppressive Fire’s Invasion EP show remarkable evolution in two of the area’s most active and reliable metal bands. And both were brought into being, in part, by the pandemic’s forced break from live performance.
For WitchTit, the forced slowdown was the opportunity they needed to polish existing recordings, tracked two years ago at The Wicked Witch, and to give the album and the band a proper push.
Though WitchTit has been an active presence live, it hadn’t released any recorded material since a previous incarnation of the band issued a split with the now-defunct band Etiolated in 2017. Now comprising guitarists Nate Stokes and Daniel Brown, bassist Justin Hill, drummer Patrick Cotter, and singer Reign, WitchTit has honed its sound for years without releasing new music.
Their gigging schedule is largely the cause for that, Stokes says.
“We get kind of distracted,” he says. “Everything else gets put on hold because we’re like, ‘Oh, we’ve got to practice the set for this show in two weeks.’ This time, we had to focus on doing this to keep us busy and our name out there.”
Even before its release, Intoxicating Lethargy has put WitchTit’s dynamic and emotive approach to traditional doom metal in front of a wide audience. The blog Doomed & Stoned praised the album’s “creepy, crunchy, and corrosive sounds with powerful, authoritative, and beautiful singing.” And, on the eve of its release, Intoxicating Lethargy is set to premiere on the website of Decibel, the long-running and authoritative heavy metal magazine.
“We’re getting pretty excited about it,” Stokes admits.
Even though the band hasn’t been able to perform live—save for a live-streamed set filmed at The Pour House in February—the album has given the band greater visibility beyond the local scene than even regular gigging might have.
For Suppressive Fire, the new music offers a re-introduction.
Over its seven years, Suppressive Fire has shifted lineups with guitarist and songwriter Joseph Bursey, the band’s only constant member. In that time, the band put out two full-length albums and a pair of EPs before coalescing into its current lineup of Bursey and Stokes on guitar, bassist Andrew Nye, drummer Scott Schopler, and singer Devin Kelley.
After solidifying the roster, Bursey says, the band made the call to not play any more old songs. With their March 4, 2020, gig opening for Soulfly and Toxic Holocaust as a deadline, the band pulled together a fresh batch of songs.
“We really had a crunch time to get an entire new set done before that show,” Bursey says. “It lit a fire under our asses to actually get the music worked out and ready to be performed live.”
The next day, the band laid down basic tracks at Schopler’s home in Chapel Hill.
Fusing the vicious thrash of bands like Sodom with elements of black metal abrasiveness and the heavy groove of Bolt Thrower’s barbaric death metal, Invasion offers a fittingly violent and compelling soundtrack to its lyrical explorations of historic warfare.
“We were aiming to do a demo and it started sounding better and better,” Bursey says.
Knowing that the pandemic was looming, the band finished the EP apart, looking at the release as an opportunity to stay visible during the shutdown.
“We were overdue, first off,” Bursey says. “But new music coming out during a pandemic would be excellent for people who don’t have access to music right now and can’t go to shows. It’s a slippery slope, though, because we can’t promote the music very well.”
Like WitchTit, Suppressive Fire has still managed to score pre-release accolades from prominent genre blogs. No Clean Singing praised the band’s “hard-charging, adrenaline-fueled storm of sound,” and CVLT Nation raved, “Their blackened thrash barrels down at you like a host of missiles ready to decimate your existence!”
Still, heavy metal is music that particularly thrives in front of a live audience. As restrictions begin to lift and vaccinations offer a glimpse of life post-COVID, a pair of strong releases offer hope that the music will be ready to reclaim rooms as soon as it’s safe to do so. “It’s going to happen,” Bursey says, matter-of-factly. “We’re going to be playing shows again at some point.”
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