Witchcraft
Firewood
Candlelight
Maybe third time's the charm
There are two kinds of “sophomore slumps” in this business: 1) the kind where a band that achieved a modest degree of success and/or acclaim with their first album goes in a slightly (or drastically) different direction on their second and falls flat on their faces, and 2) the kind where the band tries to duplicate (or improve upon) that modest degree of success and/or acclaim by doing the exact same thing on their second album—only with far less enthusiasm and far fewer good songs. Sadly, Witchcraft’s Firewood is the latter.
The band’s self-titled debut (released last year by Rise Above) fucking smoked—they somehow managed to be the Swedish second coming of Pentagram and Ozzy, no small feat in any year, much less the post-stoner rock year of 2004, when even the people who had been playing ’70s-style riff-o-rama back in ’99 had moved onto psych rock revisionism or, like, grindcore. Witchcraft, on the other hand, was about one Bobby Liebling cameo away from sucking us all into the darkest recesses of Lee Dorrian’s walk-in closet.
So why do the first 40 seconds of “If Wishes Were Horses,” the second track on Firewood, sound almost exactly like Silverchair’s “Tomorrow”? Why does “Mr. Haze” conjure up sweat-soaked renaissance rock nightmares of Ian Anderson dropping acid and prancing around the Fillmore East at midnight with Santana riding piggyback? Where are the ridiculously catchy superrock hits like “Witchcraft” or “It’s So Easy”? Still, don’t slag these dudes too hard—there’s an excellent chance they’ll come back with an album packed to the tits with sweet retro jams. For now, you could do worse.
—J. Bennett
