Simple tastes. Tight riffs. Big snares and plenty of cymbal sizzle, with the bass holding it all together in conjunction with the Almighty Kick. Stretch beyond pentatonic scales at your peril and, best of all, make sure the vocals can settle a hummingbird one moment, and rip the shingles off a house the next. I don’t know that I was expecting it to blow in from Scotland, but it’s no matter when King Witch get practically everything right about what I love in heavy music on III, their (you guessed it) third full length. All the above criteria are met, there are a few surprises, and best of all, this baby comes in at a lean 44 minutes. I always said, if it can’t fit on one side of 90-min cassette, it can probably be cut.

I think if I’m going to keep up a daily pace of new releases all month things are going to necessarily be brief. The Edinburgh trio concoct a potent brew of doom, sludge, and traditional heavy metal that is tied together by the incredible pipes of vocalist Laura Donnelly. I’ve read reviews where she’s compared to a hybrid of Janis Joplin and Chris Cornell, and I can hear it. There’s a feral, howling grit on opener “Suffer In Life” made extra bouncy thanks to guitarist Jamie Gilchrist’s swinging riff and extra thick, slippery production. III sounds absolutely massive, thick and heavy with startling clarity. You can hear every slide and squeak of the acoustic intro to “Deal With The Devil” before it lays down a colossal doom groove for Donnelly to dive into.

The drumming comes from session guest Andrew Scott who keeps it extremely tasteful and supportive of King Witch’s songs without sounding at all like he’s building a résumé or treating it like a paid gig. Paired with Rory Lee’s bass songs like the rockin’ QOTSA cousin “Diggin In The Dirt” sound ripping, feeling like a band trapped in a small storage space for months of nothing but hitting those chugs in perfect timing. But they can also shift on a dime and support the lovely psychedelic plucking of “Behind The Veil.”

The kicker for me, though, was the first track I ever heard from the album, the truly twisted knot of “Swarming Flies.” That opening riff is gnarly as hell, and Donnelly’s voice is sublime. Love the exotic flair on the chorus and the middle bridge section gets progressive in a fun, Mastodon kind of way, but much as I love my reigning modern metal band, they don’t have the pipes Donnelly does.

Big, heavy, melodic rock with crushing guitar solos and maybe the best voice in metal in 2025? King Witch have you covered.