Is this BM? Folk metal? Is there any mileage in the fact that the band hail from the same English heartland as doom pioneers My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost? Yet inspiring music is more about talent and intent than genre or style, and OCR are consummate storytellers, with timeless tales of the fecund darkness that lurks beneath the surface of England’s green and pleasant land.
Arcane traditions of revenants and witches, once kept alive around log fires, can now resonate compellingly through speakers. There are metal precedents here, of course. Cradle Of Filth are an obvious comparison, but so are folkloric films from the golden age of British horror cinema such as Blood On Satan’s Claw and The Wicker Man, or even the ghost stories of MR James.
Perhaps the unifying factor is something shadowy and unique to the English soul… ’Tis Witching Hour… is wonderfully evocative, eerie and – above all – uniquely English. The bones of this land are no longer speechless.
