Skip to main content

The Ritual Remains: Black Season Witch - Coda (Track/Experimental Film Review) Released: 11/12/25

                  



                                                       

There is something deliberate about naming a project "Coda," and Black Season Witch seems to know exactly what they're doing with the title. The Chicago cinematic goth duo of Jeff and Robert has built their identity on the intersection of sound and vision, and on this latest single, that sensibility reaches one of its most fully realized expressions yet. "Coda" is not a song so much as a scene. Dark and unhurried, it unfolds the way a film's closing sequence does, with the weight of everything that came before pressing down on every note, every silence, every measured breath between phrases. There is no urgency here, only inevitability. The track does not rush toward its conclusion; it arrives there the way dusk arrives, gradually and then all at once.

Jeff's guitar work sits at the heart of it, and his classical roots have never felt more present. A Detroit native who picked up both viola and guitar by age 9 and turned down a viola scholarship to chase the electric, Jeff brings a structural intelligence to his playing that few in the industrial goth world can match. The influence of Andres Segovia lives quietly in his phrasing, a melodic patience, a respect for space, while the shadows of Tony Iommi and Dave Navarro linger in the darker corners of the arrangement. It is guitar playing that scores a mood rather than dominates one. Black Season Witch has always understood that their music is inseparable from the visual world they inhabit, with goth film backdrops flickering behind them at live shows, turning performances into something closer to immersive theater than a conventional concert. "Coda" feels written for exactly that kind of darkness. It is the track that plays as the credits roll over a rain-soaked city street, as the last light goes out in a window somewhere above. Chicago's industrial goth tradition has always been about more than aggression; it has been about atmosphere, about the marriage of the mechanical and the human, the cold and the aching. "Coda" lives fully in that space. Jeff and Robert are not closing anything out with this experimental film. They are opening a door into something deeper. 

                                                                Here is Coda in its entirety: 
       

Go give them a follow on Instagram: Black Season Witch

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Kentucky's Heavy Secret: Stormtoker - These Edibles Ain't Shit (EP Review) Released: 12/5/25

  Lexington, Kentucky, isn't exactly the first city that comes to mind when you think of the sludge and stoner metal underground, but Stormtoker seems intent on changing that. Their EP These Edibles Ain't Shit arrives like a slow, crushing wave of amplifier worship and chemically-assisted existential dread, and it makes a compelling case that the Bluegrass State has something mean and heavy brewing beneath its surface. Stormtoker is a fierce, impassioned force of nature, a band that feels like devout disciples of Ozzy Osbourne who came of age at the turn of the millennium but refused to let the roots of heavy metal die.  With sonic DNA tracing back to Cream, Hendrix, King Crimson, and even Arthur Brown, they summon an alluring sound that entrances as much as it pummels. This is a band equally at home in the sludge pit and the alt-rock headspace, a melodic restlessness running beneath the downtuned grime that keeps things unpredictable and owing as much to the 90s alternative u...

Brutal Descent into Darkness: Heliophilia - Fire, Borne Of The Sky (Track Review) Released 3/8/26

There's something genuinely impressive about a two-piece act that can conjure a wall of sound dense enough to feel like a full band assault, and that's exactly what Marinette, Wisconsin's Heliophilia accomplishes on "Fire, Borne of the Sky." Comprised of Michael Vandermuse and Kyle Bush, this underground metal duo has crafted a track that blends deathcore brutality, black metal atmosphere, and dark fantasy storytelling into something that feels far bigger than its two-person lineup would suggest.  From the outset, "Fire, Borne of the Sky" makes clear that this isn't going to be a conventional metal track. It opens with an eerie, synth-driven low-frequency atmosphere that immediately sets a tone of dread before the track explodes into cavernous, down-tuned guitar riffs and crushing drum work. That contrast between quiet menace and overwhelming heaviness becomes the song's defining structural choice, and it's one that Heliophilia leans into ...

The Peace Found on the Other Side of Fear: January - Good Day To Die (Track Review) Released: 7/10/26

  There's a particular kind of confidence that comes from a band that isn't trying to be anything other than what it is, and January's "Good Day to Die" has it in spades. Hailing from Quincy, Illinois, a river town that isn't exactly known as a hotbed for rock music, this trio plays Midwest rock in its purest, most unpretentious form. No gimmicks, no genre-hopping, no chasing whatever's trending this month. Just three musicians who know exactly what they're going for, and hit it dead center. That's not a small thing in 2026, when so much of guitar-driven rock feels like it's either nostalgia-baiting or trying too hard to sound "modern" by bolting on production tricks that don't belong. January doesn't seem interested in either impulse. "Good Day to Die" sounds like a band that grew up on classic rock radio and bar-band Saturday nights, filtered through whatever specific chemistry exists between these three people,...