Coming on the heels of their well received 2018 release ATW, All Them Witches experienced some changes and opportunities. For their follow up Nothing as the Ideal, the group has reconfigured as a trio (gone is keyboardist Jonathan Draper) and they were also were able to record at the legendary Abbey Road Studios’ Studio Two. The result is an excellent sounding but slightly flat affair as the band settles into life as a trio.
Vocalist, bassist, and guitarist Charles Michael Parks, Jr., drummer Robby Staebler and guitarist Ben McLeod have tightened the reins on their influences like Pink Floyd and Black Sabbath while focusing more on standard metal and grunge tropes. There are sound experiments and tape collages, but they feel tacked on to spruce up a standard number rather laboriously.
The strongest track arrives first as “Saturnine and Iron Jaw” leisurely begins the record with odd slow ominous sounds while injecting Pink Floyd type guitar leads before things get heavy two minutes in. The song takes a touch of psychedelic with its stomp rock in the vein of Tool while the other very successful offering “Lights Out” pairs hyped up excellent drumming with looping spacey guitars in an intriguing fashion.
However, All Them Witches seem to find comfort in the chugging grunge of both “41” and “Enemy of My Enemy” which take inspiration from early Soundgarden, while the pretty instrumental “Everest” drips into the prog-like “See You Next Fall” a doom laden elongated passageway that travels the cosmic highways during its finale but never really catches fire.
All Them Witches tries on some acoustic instrumentation, as the folk balladry of “The Children of Coyote Woman” is a slow change of pace but the tale of Remus and Romulus is quirky at best, while the extended intro to the finale “Rats in Ruin” serves as a placeholder before the gorgeous outer space guitars which wrap up the track and the album.
Nothing as the Ideal serves as a creative change of pace for a band that serves up its own mystical neo-psychedelic tales. Gone are the bluesy, desert/garage rock undercurrents, but well soon find out if this brings All Them Witches to a new era of possibility.
