Indianapolis doom band Lust Witch unleash a sludgy new EP, We All Die Alone.

The band is Taylor Hoang (bass, vocals), Ian Gernhardt (guitar, vocals), and Mason Plummer (drums). The music they play is a doom/sludge integration that leans into the heavy riff and presses it to the blackout stage. We All Die Alone is their first album.

There are four songs on the EP, each labeled with a word from the title. “We,” then, is first. It offers a disorienting stance in the opening couple of minutes, with disconcerting staccato chants hurled that are surrounded by a sputtering generator of surges and recessions. A more ordered and persistent thrumming sets in and pushes toward the conclusion, leading into “All.” The second track is more cinematically dreary, like a Hammer horror movie with deep, rich tones. The pace accelerates and the vocals broaden in profile throughout the first half. The fatal chop returns and the listener faces enpummelment.

“Die,” the longest track on the album at nine-and-a-half minutes, continues the litany. The initial tone here strikes me as melancholy. The constant reminder of awaiting eternity bears down on you here, too, and by now it is really getting under your skin. In whatever tempo shift or transition we might find ourselves, there is that constancy waiting for us at the end, altogether unavoidable. And, ultimately, we face it “Alone,” as the final track drives home. Truly, these songs form a suite that is easily, arguably, a single piece. The final movement is smoothest around the edges and also the saddest because of the singular inevitability it describes.

This music was recorded live in the studio, and the band must have been channeling the ethereal muse because they have created a memorable, fundamental slab of doom. Give it a listen and then go see them live. Recommended.

We All Die Alone is out now. Pick it up at Bandcamp – link below.

Band photos by Wayne Edwards

Links.

Bandcamp, https://lustwitchdoom.bandcamp.com/album/we-all-die-alone

Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/Lust-Witch-110221191691214

© Wayne Edwards