What Sorcery Is This?
It is, my friends, the latest offering from Abigail Williams, our symphonic, barbwire encrusted metal heroes who have overcome the trials of the music industry and personal life to create this body of work. Their name is that of a young girl who was one of the accusers in the Salem witch trials, whose statements resulted in hundreds of girls being killed after being denounced for witchcraft. How fortunate that an album like this reinforces the heavyweight band name, a bold affirmation indeed, and we advance forward with the intoxicating opener ‘I Will Depart’ which has a blacker than black edge telling of a ‘desolation, cold, alone’ and ‘a starving child, a beaten dog’, we really do not have the intelligence or courage to see what we have become. The accompanying press shots are visually beautiful, enthralling, which see singer Ken Sorceron standing near a bleak, autumnal shoreline, alone against the world, but there is no sadness here, I find it all the more alluring and bedazzling.
A captivating interlude at 4.58 in ‘Sun And Moon’ engages the listener, and we understand the intricacies of the elaborate composition in this work.
We enter Cradle Of filth territory with ‘Ever So Bold’, and we relish a chance to re-live our own allegiance to other artists, and how music is a huge influence in our hearts and minds.
‘Black Waves’ has an auricularly astounding introduction and a cunning change at 3.12 which is an excellent example of the creative arrangements here.
With daylight fading, and organs failing fast we enter ‘Into the Sleep’ yet we are unaware as to the respite or restlessness it will yield, but for an acceptance that we may be ‘Born Of Nothing’ enriches the desperation and intensity.
The punisher to complete the carnage is ‘The Final Failure’ and with high drama riff-o-rama at 5.34, well I’m as happy as a pig in mud. A hit on all the senses, this is a well- orchestrated and mindful album, as darkness prevails, we are left to revel in our own wretchedness ladies and gents, take comfort from the deafening silence and let’s sink into the vantablack.
Abigail Williams – Walk Beyond The Dark out 15th November via Blood Music
A poem for Abigail Williams – Black Blood
Black waves crash upon the shore
Black blood leeches into the shallows,
I will depart you can be sure
As the sun and the moon in orbit,
Sleep I must forfeit
To know the final failure,
And how I was born of nothing
But the something I became
Was enough so my accuser, would ever so boldly,
Ungodly and unholy,
Force my hand, albeit tied,
No one would understand,
What should have been a walk in the park,
Became a walk in the dark,
Far beyond the tree line
Beyond the shoreline,
The skyline beckoned
So, I walked beyond the horizon
And through a diaphanous veil
Into an infinity, an eternity
Where I would never sleep
And never awaken,
still I lay breathless and helpless
to sink into the ashes
as the car crashes,
we lie in the embers, in the cinders,
which cannot be rescinded.
How in the absence of light,
I could muster some semblance of a life,
An elestial radiance,
Emitting an energy, a power
To allow my transcendence to a place of tranquillity
Instead I am overcome by a sickness lasting three days,
Still I lay, bare, shielded,
Only by the shadows
As the black blood leeches,
The floods destined to return
And wash away what once existed,
Always resisted,
But departure is the only way,
I won’t live to die another day.
Azra Pathan © 2019
Listen to new single Ever So Bold below!