Witchery announce new album ‘Nightside’

July 1, 2022 James Weaver

WITCHERY have announced a brand new album!

Titled Nightside, the upcoming from the Swedish blackened thrash band is the follow-up to 2017’s I Am Legion, and is scheduled to be released in July this year, via Century Media Records.

The upcoming album was recorded with the WITCHERY lineup consisting of Jensen [THE HAUNTED, ex-SEANCE], Rickard Rimfält [SEANCE], Angus Norder [NEKROKRAFT], Victor Brandt [DIMMU BORGIR, ex-ENTOMED A.D.] – who now officially replaces longtime bassist Sharlee D‘Angelo – and Chris Barkensjö [ex-KAAMOS]. The album was once more mixed and produced with Daniel Bergstrand [BEHEMOTH, IN FLAMES etc] and comes with artwork by Andreas ‘Diaz’ Pettersson.

Speaking about the upcoming album, guitarist Jensen says, “I started to write this album without any general direction of idea in mind, but somewhere in the middle of the writing process I remembered that I’ve always wanted to do a concept album, so I decided to give it a shot. Little did I know that writing a concept album puts a lot more pressure on each and every song turning out great. This might seem a norm (and I guess it is in some way) but usually you write 12-14 songs and choose the songs that turned out the best after they’ve been mixed and mastered. Sometimes even what you thought was going to be the first song on the album gets pushed to somewhere else because another track turned out sounding more like an opening track.

Also, out of those 12-14 songs you can choose to keep a few a bonus tracks. With a theme album, songs can‘t swap places. The story needs to work (no one wants to do a new The Elder!), so the opening track really needs to hold up as an opening track etc., thus the extra pressure of ‘no surprises’ after its all recorded. The album tells a story of demonic nightmares, unexplainable pregnancy, witch trails and an escape from the Old Country to the colonies in the west and what happens once the child is born. Guests on this album is, for starters, our permanent guest of honor Hank Shermann, but also guest solos by Maciek Ofstad of KVELERTAK and Simon Johansson of WOLF (also the studio owner of SolnaStudio where we recorded the album. We also had the honor of having Jeff Walker of CARCASS do guest vocals on the song A Forest of Burning Coffins. All in all, we are very happy with how the album turned out and with again thrilled over Daniel Bergstrand‘s killer production…”

Alongside the announcement of the new album, WITCHERY have released a new music video for the first song lifted from the upcoming album; Witching Hour. The new music video was directed by Martin Hultgren / Gryt Film AB, with post-production handled by Eduardo Hidalgo / E2h Design Studio & Maciej Pieloch / MPieloch.com.

Speaking about the new song, Jensen adds, “and so, the Witching Hour has finally arrived…This, the opening track of the new concept album Nightside, kicks off a story of unreal nightmares, demonic possession, inquisitional witches’ trials and then dives into the really dark stuff, haha. First try for us to create a concept album and we are very happy with how it turned out. We worked hard at creating songs that followed the dramaturgy of the story (which was more work than we ever realized, but a challenged we accepted and overcame!). We’re pretty sure that Popecrusher, and now Witching Hour, will pique your interest in hearing the full story of Nightside!”

Watch the official music video for Witching Hour here:

Also, you can view both the track list and artwork for the upcoming new album below:

Track List:

1. Witching Hour
2. Don‘t Burn the Witch
3. Storm of the Unborn
4. Er steht in Flammen
5. Popecrusher
6. Left Hand March
7. Under the Altar
8. Churchburner
9. Crucifix and Candle
10. A Forest of Burning Coffins
11. Nightside