Before listening to Spanish blackened death metallers Witches’ Sabbath’s New World Plague I would have never thought a band could be both extremely promising and shit-fucking-awful at the same time, and yet, that’s the opinion I’m left with after the album ended.

Witches’ Sabbath are primarily a death metal act, mixed with a lot of black metal elements. Nothing they do really fits into the confines of any specific genre, as they sound like a combination of generic Norwegian black metal, Bay Area thrash, old school European death metal and electronica.

A lot of the riffs the group use are solid and powerful, from blazing death metal tremolo picking to blackened shredding to thrashtastic melodies. The guitars by themselves are fantastic, but, unfortunately, there are drums, vocals and keyboards popping up to turn this album into a gigantic shitstain.

The vocals on this effort are fucking awful. The majority of the vocals are done with a generic black metal rasp, nothing too exciting, but, unfortunately, the group also use death metal vocals from time to time, and they are so far beyond bad I can’t even think of a word to describe them, so I’ll simply call it shitacular. It literally sounds like your girlfriend trying to mock death metal vocals using a lame Cookie Monster-with-a-serious-case-of-constipation growl. As terrible as the death metal vocals may be, the clean vocals are worse. Much worse. I have met mentally handicapped kids who can carry a tune better and would drool a lot less on the microphone than whoever does the clean vocals for Witches’ Sabbath. To get the appropriate effect simply get really sloppily drunk and take half a bottle of laxatives and try to sing in tune when you’re both slurring and grunting as your ass explodes in a frothy crapuccino.

The vocals aren’t the only thing that suck, no, no… the keyboards are stupid too. Granted, the keyboards generally only show up in the first minute and last minute of any given song, but, for whatever reason, they have a futuristic vibe to them leaving a brutal blackened death metal assault supported by keyboards that sound like they were cut from Fear Factory’s last album for being too weak, which leaves a nice shit smear flowing through your eardrums.

Speaking of drums, the drumming on this effort is done with a drum machine and is, unfortunately, incredibly dull. There’s just the endless stream of blasts and the boring generic programming and it just sucks the remainder of the life out of the album.

If Witches’ Sabbath recorded an album that was just guitars, it would probably have been a solid album; unfortunately New World Plague adds those other aforementioned elements and turns the album into one soggy diaper full of poo. If the group drop the death metal and clean vocals and get a good drummer and get rid of the keyboards completely then they’ll probably be a very solid blackened death metal band, but as it stands today they’re just a creamy steaming pile of birdie num-nums. Written By: Teufel