Windhand – Practice Space Demo 2010

I got to know this very young US band about two months ago through an advice of a British blog friend, Sabbathian, who is always giving me some cool hints.

Well, Windhand is from Richmond, Virginia, but these guys sound soooo British! Why?

Because they play a very charming, dirty and groovy blend of vintage psychedelia and heavy doom metal/rock which evokes, in me at least, opium parlours, obscure hippie-styled sabbath rituals in foggy, mossy places, mushrooms all over, and so on.

The band includes four members: Ryan Wolfe on drums, Nathan Hilbish on bass, Garrett Morris and Asechiah Bogdan on guitars and, last but absolutely not least, Dorthia Cottrell on vocals.

My statement about singer Dorthia Cottrel is not much related to feminist sense of support but for the fact that Dorthia is what makes, for me, the difference.

If you go on sites like Last.Fm and type Windhand, you'll see a very long list of bands that share "super similarities" with these Richmond doomsters.

That's normal, as these guys + gal are adepts of the room-shaking heaviness typical of classic doom à-la-Pentagram and Saint Vitus. But Windhand is female-fronted, and Dorthia's vocals is so charming!

I'm generally not fond of female vocalists in metal, in particular of the performances in sugary symphonic or gothic metal. But I like the performance of female singers in doom, such as in Blood Ceremony, Jex Thoth or Devil's Blood. Neither nightingale voices nor wild hardcore screams: in doom female vocalists are able to give a great sense of melody without taking away a single bit of the sinister, creepy atmospheres and of the filth and oppression created by heavy distortion and by the stone heavy riffs. And, I don't know why, they add a certain vintage touch as well to the sound. Maybe because they recall the occult psychedelic aura of the seminal band Coven ...

On blog Morbid Rupture a reviewer wrote that the vocals of Dorthia Cottrell “have a very Devil's Blood-y feel to them, almost like Glen Danzig if he were a woman". In spite of the "gentle" female touch, Windhand is heavy as f***: guitars and bass are "so drenched in fuzz that you can't even make out the white noise associated with heavy distortion".

Of course Windhand's Virginian origin seeps through the tunes, as some riffs possess an unmistakable sludgy-southern flavour.

So if you like the mysterious and morbid atmospheres evoked by the charming witches as in Blood Ceremony, Devil's Blood, Jex Thoth, Mourn or Hands Of Orlac, high distortion in classic heavy doom (you add a list ...) with an American touch à-la-Acid King, Windhand is for you.

The band has so far released a self-produced two-track demo (Black Candles and the +10 minutes-long Winter Sun) and there's a third track on myspace (Heap Wolves, dating back to 2009) that guitarist Garrett was so kind to send me on request. They also have some cool t-shirts.

So, three songs are not much, it's just a first step, but this doomy folks are doing live activity and are exposing themselves. I am confident that quality will pay and that this promising bud will be soon into blossom.

I've got my own demo and my t-shirt. Now I'm waiting for a full-length ...  
Windhand @ Myspace

Review Writeen By Marilena Moroni