Bell Witch & Aerial Ruin: Branching Out
BELL WITCH is among the foremost bands in the doom metal style, performing with the unconventional setup of bassist (Dylan Desmond) and drummer (Jesse Shriebman). They rose to prominence with their third album Mirror Reaper; an eighty minute piece which saw the duo taking on an increasingly meditative approach to their funereal dirge. Meanwhile the dark folk balladry of AERIAL RUIN, solo-project of Erik Moggridge, has brought an acoustic salve to the heavy music scene in the Pacific Northwest. Together they have produced a collaborative effort which brings the seismic weight of BELL WITCH into alignment with AERIAL RUIN’s pensive lamentation. Stygian Bough Vol. I promises to be among the most exciting collaborations in heavy music this year, so Distorted Sound sought out Dylan Desmond and Erik Moggridge ahead of the album’s release to get an insight into this new project.
Stygian Bough Vol. I is a collaboration which has been years in the making. As Desmond recalls, Moggridge had been their first choice of vocalist when BELL WITCH was first starting out. “I think it was 2010, 2011 something like that. Adrian Guerra, who was the drummer at the time, and I were both big fans of AERIAL RUIN, and we said we should find a vocalist for the band. Erik was our first and only choice.”
Smiling, Moggridge interjects, “I don’t really remember it quite the same way as Dylan.” Unfortunately circumstances had conspired against them, as they lived in different cities. “So instead, we settled on the idea of just doing a song together,” Desmond adds. “That song is from the first album, it’s called Rows (of Endless Waves), and when we were working on the next record [Four Phantoms] we asked him to do another one, which he did – that was Suffocation, a Drowning: II – Somniloquoy (The Distance of Forever) – and when we were working on the last record (Mirror Reaper), same thing.”
Originally the record had been conceived rather differently, as Moggridge recollects. “It was Dylan’s idea that we would cover each other’s songs, so BELL WITCH would cover an AERIAL RUIN song, and then I would cover a BELL WITCH song. I was thinking about doing Bails of Flesh from the Longing album, because that’s actually a song I always really wanted to sing on. I think BELL WITCH were going to do The Twist in the Chain, which is an old song of mine.”
The initial idea for this split release quickly took on a more collaborative dynamic. “At one point we were thinking about making it just an acoustic album,” remarks Moggridge. “Still a collaboration, but mellow the whole way through. We quickly realised we wanted to incorporate the real BELL WITCH sound into the album.” Desmond continues. “I was nervous about this because I was worried that Jesse and I putting BELL WITCH over the top of Erik’s music would ruin the magic that is AERIAL RUIN. So we said we should do a full-on collaboration record together, in the direction of what would have happened if Erik had joined the band way back when.”
Stygian Bough Vol. I is not just BELL WITCH with clean vocals, nor is it just an amplified AERIAL RUIN. Their collaborative efforts blend aspects of both projects into a definite whole. “Dynamically the bands are opposed, but I think there’s a thread that runs through both of them,” elucidates Moggridge. “BELL WITCH is very focussed on the purgatorial, and AERIAL RUIN takes a spiritual perspective stemming from the loss of the self; so, there are lots of parallels there, and I think our writing styles have a lot of parallels as well. It’s always been a really good match.”
The themes of Stygian Bough go all the way back to Moggridge’s first appearance in BELL WITCH, on their first album Longing, as he explains. “In some ways it’s a continuation of the lyrics for Rows (of Endless Waves). In that song, a ghost is trapped out on the rows of endless waves, and it can’t reach the shore. So, I started writing the lyrics with that in mind. I started thinking about the ghost as the ghost of the king, and if he reached land he’d take his human form and be able to rule, reborn. I was thinking about the king as a metaphor for the human species, how we take over the entire planet. This album is kind of the same idea, but explored at length.”
Stygian Bough Vol. I is as cerebral in its theme as it is vast in sound and visceral in its effect. The album is bookended by two twenty-minute pieces, The Bastard Wind and The Unbodied Air, which celebrate the long-form potential of their shared style. Heaven Torn Low I and II explore mellower and more uplifting tones respectively, creating a sublime mid-album plateau. This album is designed to be heard its entirety, and deserves careful attention in its nuances and details. Looking ahead, plans are already underway for a sequel to Vol. I. “We’ve already started working on a piece Erik wrote with plans of making an EP,” comments Desmond. “I secretly suspect that it will turn into more than an EP, because this is how things generally work when we get together.” Whether the album will carry on Vol. I’s epic is as yet undecided, but the on-going collaboration between the Pacific North-West’s finest gives us cause for delight as we patiently anticipate a live incarnation of Stygian Bough in the UK sometime in early 2021.
Stygian Bough Volume 1 is out now via Profound Lore.
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