Heretic Rapture by Witchbreed is a fairly impressive debut disk on one hand and yet somehow unremarkable on another.
The fusion of metal with a female singer to add melody is hardly anything new in the music scene. Nightwish, Within Temptation, Krypteria, and countless others have adopted this tactic and tried to put their own spin on it to stand out from the crowd.
Even though this is perhaps an overused trend and there is a veritable boatload of mediocre music released in this category, this is a trend I’m all for on the whole. When done correctly, this fusion of melody and aggression can be simply captivating.
Witchbreed doesn’t sound terribly original in concept, but in execution they actually manage to stand out from the crowd nicely.
Most bands of this sort go gothic, operatic, or epic, fusing together not only female vocals and metal music, but choirs, orchestra, synth, and more for a powerful sound.
Witchbreed takes a slightly different path.
They fuse a female vocalist who is somewhat more aggressive than the norm with a largely stripped-down, no-frills metal sound for something much more pure, yet much more interesting than what many other similar bands have been able to come up with.
Truth be told, Heretic Rapture’s music would sound fine paired with a typical grunting, growling, screaming, generic male metal vocalist. But the addition of the powerful, talented female vocalist puts it in a different category and makes the listening experience far more memorable, even if the music behind the vocals isn’t particularly innovative.
There’s nothing wrong with a lack of innovation, mind you, as long as what’s there is performed well. That is certainly true of Heretic Rapture.
There’s not really a clunker to be found on the whole album. On the other hand, there’s not really any standout tracks either.
Therein lies the album’s biggest problem. While it is very well executed and pleasurable to listen to the whole way through, if your experience was like mine then you’ll come out of it not being able to remember many of the individual tracks apart, even if the experience as a whole was enjoyable.
The likely cause of this phenomenon is a lack of variety. Most of the tracks are cut quite distinctly from the same cloth and offer only variations on the same theme, rather than bothering to change things up and introduce new ideas.
The end result being that if you like their basic sound, you’ll probably like the whole disc, but if you don’t there’s not going to be a single track on here to change your mind.
Nevertheless, Heretic Rapture is a solid debut album. The band is clearly capable of producing solid songs and catchy riffs. The lead singer can hold her own amongst the veritable flood of female metal vocalists out there and not only belt out a solid track, but manage to stand out while doing so.
There is a clear foundation of talent in Witchbreed and if you like the idea of basic, churning metal paired with powerful female vocals, you would be doing yourself a disservice not to check out their debut. You’ll probably come away pleased, even if your socks remain firmly in place.
What’s really exciting about Witchbreed, however, is what could be coming next. If the band can make good on their strengths and manage to overcome their primary weakness of repetition by sprinkling in a little variety, then their sophomore effort could be outstanding.
Keep an eye on these guys.
In the meantime, give their first disc a few spins. It’s a perfectly capable, even memorable, album when taken as a whole that, miraculously, manages to put a unique spin on the “female metal vocalist” schtick.