There have been a lot of questions asked about Melbourne metal lords Witchgrinder over the years. Are they industrial? Are they thrash? The answer to those questions is that Witchgrinder is an entity and a sound all of their own. There was nothing before them that was similar and nobody has managed to emulate their sound since. Perhaps the most surprising thing about the band is that we have now been experiencing the magic that was their debut feature length album, The Demon Calling, for a decade now.
“Because it is the tenth anniversary we thought it was time to do something special for it,” says founding band member Travis when we sit down to talk about the album and the special vinyl re-release. “It was out first album and to be honest I am still pretty happy about it and up until this day we still play a lot of the songs from it live. It never had a release on vinyl so when we first spoke to John from Rue Morgue about it we thought what better time to do it than now.”
That leads us to talk about how important it is for Travis to have some Witchgrinder vinyl out there for the fans. “See vinyl is the first source of music that I ever picked up,” he explains. “When I was young my father had a whole bunch of Black Sabbath records, some Iron Maiden and a bunch of AC/DC. So when I was young he would show me how to pull them out of your collection, blow the dust off them and put them on. I wasn’t allowed to touch them for a long, long time, not until they were older so there is something special about listening to music on vinyl… I don’t know what it is but it is something special. It is certainly something special to me!”
It turns out that part of the excitement of doing a tenth anniversary version of The Demon Calling on vinyl also ticks off a huge bucket list item for the band.
“We always wanted to do a vinyl release,” says Travis with a small laugh. “But it was always going to be very costly – especially when we were already doing CDs. We had to cost out getting the artwork done and there just ended up being a number of reasons why we ended up putting it to the side. We had always planned to do vinyl so yeah when John and I spoke about it my eyes just lit up so yeah I am super excited. I am excited just to be able to sit down and play it myself on a record player.”
As we continue to chat about the band and where they are at today we end up going back to chat about was happening with the band when they first went into the studio to record The Demon Calling.
“It feels so long ago,” he says laughing out loud. “We were so excited, we had released an EP before that and that had had a great response. The band was at that point where we were starting to be talked about and we were starting to play bigger shows. We had just had a new bass player come into the band. The songs were pretty much down by the time we got into the studio because some of the songs were from the EP and a lot of them we had been playing live.”
“It was a good experience getting into the studio to record that,” he says continuing. “We recorded with a guy named Sam Johnson and he just told us to keep it raw as possible. He got us to set our amps to the way that we would when we were on stage and things like that. He didn’t want us to sound anything but the way we were sounding at the time – which was really cool because I do notice with some of our newer stuff how much our sound has evolved since then but we also do a lot of different stuff. So when I go back and listen to this album I do hear the what and why we were doing those things back then. It is like the time is captured in the music if that makes sense.”
So that leads me to the big question. What exactly can Witchgrinder fans expect from this 10th Anniversary Vinyl release of The Demon Calling?
“They can expect something pretty damn special,” says Travis again laughing. “It is all totally getting remastered so it won’t just be the master from the original release. Every song will be remastered and there will be extra artwork in there. There will be some signed things and the album will come with a mini-booklet with a lot of behind-the-scenes photos that we never released. There will be a lot of cool stuff even from the guys that aren’t in the band anymore.”
So there you are people this release is going to be very special – and you’ve been warned the demon is about to come calling…again!!!
