Bell Witch & Aerial Ruin – Stygian Bough: Volume II 2LP

Aptly named in reference to the aforementioned book, on Stygian Bough Volume II, the collaboration between Bell Witch (Dylan Desmond, Jesse Shreibman) and Aerial Ruin (Erik Moggridge) enlivens its unbodied presence resembling both collaborating projects as a conduit in its own separate entity. In the course of an hour, four musical pieces set themselves apart from the catalogs of both individual bands and branch into new territory all the while threaded to the original encounter.

Over the album a cyclical world unfolds in which different perspectives of how various forms of worship empower, eclipse, destroy and feed on each other is explored. “All four songs explore different aspects of worship or awe—transcendent experiences in different contexts,” vocalist & guitarist Erik Moggridge says.

“Waves Became The Sky,” the opening track on Volume II, recalls “Rows (of Endless Waves)” from Bell Witch’s debut album Longing. It was here that Bell Witch and Aerial Ruin had initial contact. The song expands on the 2012 original’s theme pondering, as Moggridge says, “the battle of scientific thinking compared to superstitious thinking.”  And it wastes no time in its approach; sonic waves form an immediate pulse well known to anyone familiar with Bell Witch and Stygian Bough Volume I. The immediacy of Moggridge’s guitar and vocal choruses add layer upon layer of harmonic depth with polyrhythmic melodies as they soar with Desmond’s two handed method of bass guitar.

“King of the Wood,” quickly lurks into an abyss death-doom fans of Thergothon and My Dying Bride will find familiarity in. On the track, Moggridge says it is “about rapture and confusion that come from calculating scale, from the very small to the very large.” Shreibman’s drum passages mirror the fluidity of the melodic instruments. But before an emotional pinnacle can be reached the track slips into a swirling galaxy resembling the expansiveness of Tangerine Dream echoing from far inside the black hole at its center. Soon Moggridge’s vocals return with a haunting passage that Shreibman’s drums soon interrupt with the immediacy of a nuclear bomb.

Track three, “From Dominion,” opens to the power trio resembling the elements of Aerial Ruin’s dark folk temperaments. With a voice one can imagine emerging from some forgotten dimension in ancient Albion, Moggridge pulls thread as much enchantment as song. Soon enough the brooding acoustics transform into soaring melodies with the dueling harmonic magic of a Thin Lizzy guitar solo riding the rhythmic pounding of Shreibman’s drums. At its most tangible moments, the song could almost be said to have been constructed with the repeating verses and choruses common in folk music.

Moggridge states that “Told and Leadened,” the album’s closer and longest track clocking in at just over nineteen minutes, “is about the cycles of power and how they eclipse and prop each other up.” The song starts like a tide slowly returning after its preceding wave. Bass feedback and a repetitious guitar rhythm foreshadow Shreibman’s drums once again exploding in an urgency like that of early doom classicists Candlemass. The waves continue throughout, recalling the rising and falling intensities in the song structures established on 2020’s Volume I, which Blabbermouth declared “Contender for doom metal album of the year.” In a harmonic break in the composition, Shreibman embarks on a drum passage reminding one of the outro to Neurosis’ Enemy of the Sun. Coincidentally, the album was also recorded by Billy Anderson in Portland.

Anderson has worked on 3 prior Bell Witch recordings (Four Phantoms, Mirror Reaper, Clandestine Gate). “There’s a creative camaraderie that we have with him,” Desmond says. “He knows where we’re coming from. He’s worked with us on numerous other projects, but his outsider’s perspective is particularly valuable, like a filter system that helps me see it objectively, rather than subjectively.”

The separation of tracks, uncommon in Bell Witch’s modern era, remains compositionally fluid between each piece. “This is as close to traditional songwriting as any of us have done together” says Shreibman. “We gave special attention to a lot of polyphonic passages,” Desmond adds, “which is a rarity in past (Bell Witch) records due to limitations of instrumentation, a two piece band can only play so many instruments at once. This applies even more so to the solo act of Aerial Ruin.”

The result is a commanding four songs steeped in mysticism, legend, and the examination of “the connective threads that shape and influence the culture, mythology, and customs of all human societies throughout time in unique, localized ways as referenced in the Golden Bough,” says Desmond.

The cover features a stunning painting by acclaimed artist Denis Forkas (Behemoth, Wolves in the Throne Room). The piece encapsulates the focused attention and emotional heft of Stygian Bough Volume II.