Release Date 10.04.2026
Format CD/LP/Digital
Genre Progressive/Sludge Metal
Origin USA
Born in the rain-soaked trenches of Seattle back in 2012, Witch Ripper has been dragging their brand of heavy, melodic sludge through the mud for over a decade. They started out with a self-titled EP that smelled like wet pavement and followed it up with the 2018 debut "Homestead". By the time they dropped "The Flight After The Fall" in 2023, these Pacific Northwest riff-peddlers finally started getting the global attention they deserved for blending cosmic prog-rock with the kind of thick, swampy tones that make your teeth rattle. Now they’re back to finish the story of a space traveler who tried to die in a black hole and somehow made things even worse for himself.
"Through The Hourglass" is a massive trip, but let’s be real, it’s a lot to swallow at once. The band is clearly obsessed with that mid-2000s Mastodon vibe where everything is a swirling vortex of twin-guitar harmonies and drumming that sounds like a frantic octopus. Songs like "Odyssey In Retrograde" and "The Clock Queen" show they’ve got the technical chops to outplay most of the posers in the scene. The vocals are a weird, beautiful mess of soaring melodies and throat-shredding bellows that actually work together instead of fighting for space.
The production is handled by Matt Bayles, and you can tell because it sounds massive and expensive. It’s got that professional sheen that might annoy the basement-dwelling purists who only want to hear demos recorded in a trash can. There’s a heavy influence from Coheed And Cambria and Muse bleeding through the cracks here, which brings a certain flamboyant rock-star energy to the dirtier sludge elements. It’s a strange cocktail of David Bowie’s space-oddity flair mixed with riffs that could flatten a city block.
Where the record stumbles slightly is in its own ambition. Sometimes they get so wrapped up in the sci-fi narrative and the "pulp fiction" aesthetics that the actual hooks get buried under layers of prog-rock indulgence. "The Portal" and "The Spiral Eye" are cool as hell, but they meander a bit when a straight-up kick to the skull would have sufficed. It’s an album for people who want to stare at the album art while dissecting every single note, which is great, but it loses some of that raw, primal energy that made their early stuff feel dangerous.
Overall, Witch Ripper is definitely at the top of their game and they’re showing the world that Seattle still knows how to produce heavy music that isn't just a Nirvana rip-off. They’ve managed to capture a specific kind of cosmic dread that feels right for 2026. If you want something that bridges the gap between stadium rock and a subterranean riff-fest, this is it. It’s smart, it’s loud, and it’s got enough attitudes to keep the fire burning until their next tour.
Score: 7.5
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