Bell Witch

Operating from Seattle, Washington, the metal duo Bell Witch has cultivated a sparse yet forceful strain of doom, sludge, and post-metal. Drawing their name from a traditional folkloric poltergeist, the pair’s deliberately paced, weighty compositions surround the listener entirely, moving between melodic stretches, grief-stricken passages, and a darkness that edges toward outright hostility. Observers frequently noted the striking contrast between raw emotional force and sheer sonic mass in their work.

From the outset, founder and bassist Dylan Desmond has described the group’s guiding principle as the creation of sonic ghost stories. Their earliest efforts, including a forty-minute demo, already conveyed that aim; by the arrival of the 2018 release Mirror Reaper—an unbroken eighty-seven-minute composition shaped amid personal loss—the approach had reached full realization.

The project began in 2010 when drummer and vocalist Adrian Guerra joined Desmond. Their first offering was a self-titled, full-length demo whose two lengthy central pieces, framed by brief introductory and closing sections, delivered the glacial melancholy and sense of impending dread that would become the band’s signature. Strong critical and online response led to a deal with Profound Lore, resulting in the 2012 debut Longing, mixed by Brandon Fitzsimons. Six tracks made up the album, two exceeding ten minutes and one stretching past twenty, all defined by a crawling, sinuous heaviness.

Four Phantoms appeared in 2014, accompanied by European and American tours. During this period, escalating tensions arose over Guerra’s growing alcohol consumption. Longtime friend and live-sound engineer Jesse Shreibman, who also served as road manager, mediated between the two musicians to ease friction. Once touring ended and work on the next album began, Desmond—feeling complicit in enabling the situation—asked Guerra to depart in 2015; the split occurred without acrimony. Shreibman was subsequently invited to take Guerra’s place, and extended discussions between the two drummers helped secure Guerra’s approval of the change.

While composing new material in 2016, Guerra died in his sleep from a heart attack at age thirty-six. Desmond and Shreibman halted activity, unsure how to continue under the weight of grief. They resumed in 2017 and finished Mirror Reaper, issued at the end of October. The single-track, eighty-seven-minute piece served as a tribute to Guerra and incorporated his guide vocals. Widespread acclaim followed, opening doors to major international tours. In 2018 the archival recording Live at Roadburn, captured in 2015 and documenting one of Guerra’s final performances, was released.

A frequent collaborator on Mirror Reaper and earlier Bell Witch material was Erik Moggridge, frontman of Aerial Ruin. Longstanding ties between the projects led to plans for a joint release in which each act would reinterpret songs by the other. Those plans evolved into a true collaborative effort, logical given the shared thematic focus on the dissolution of self as a path toward spiritual renewal.

The two acts constructed a narrative drawn from The Golden Bough, the 1890 study by Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer. The chosen tale follows a slave who rises to kill a king, only to become ensnared by the same luxuries, comforts, suspicions, jealousies, illusions of permanence, and eventual enslavement. The resulting album, Stygian Bough Volume One, appeared in summer 2020.