“Witch’s Blood” by Orion works a spell of converging time periods and ignites within me a nostalgia for events that never happened, or that I never experienced. It wastes no time in getting down to its main progression, with prickly guitars laying down a not-quite-hard chug-chug-rest-chug rhythm over billowing distortion and a touch of synth before everything dips into a riff refrain that will have metalheads kicking themselves in the ass for not having thought of it first. All of this and then repeat with plaintive vocals—and it’s damned effective.
What is this nostalgia? I want to say a blend of ’90s shoegaze and pre-post-rock postmodern rock but sounding current in a way that current music doesn’t. And with a touch of something I can’t quite grasp from my childhood, something early ’80s but lacking all of the overproduced flash. Which is to say that this all sounds more organic than it feels like it should. Before I can figure it out, the primary instruments suddenly fade for a final-minute anti-whizz bang ending by allowing some distortion to ring over the synths—which might be playing a different progression now! It’s a dreamy outro and it makes the song’s opening all the more impactful when played on repeat.