Bend thrash/black metal group Gravewitch has been suspiciously quiet this year, playing only one show so far. But that silence is deceiving. Over the summer, guitarist/vocalist Chris Fleming and drummer Andrew Ingraham added local metal mainstay Brandon Self into the fold as bassist, and the now-trio is busy prepping its first studio album, to be recorded later this year according to the band.

As a prelude, earlier this month the band dropped a seven-song demo, “Forgotten,” originally recorded in late 2016 in Eugene with producer Isamu Sato. The unmastered demo, available online on YouTube and in physical form at the band’s shows, features the earliest material Fleming and Ingraham wrote when they joined forces as Gravewitch in 2013.

This set was originally meant to be the band’s debut album, and with a bit of sonic clean-up, it would have made for an impressive official debut. Even as it stands without mastering, the recording is raw but crisp, with only a few odd volume drop-offs scattered in the mix. The bass, played by Fleming, is also mostly lost in the mix, serving as a way to beef up the riffs (as the band has operated as a two-piece for so long — and given this genre’s tendency to bury the instrument anyway — it’s not really missed).

Musically, these songs rarely let up, but there’s texture amidst the thrashing and bashing. Fleming eschews typical metal soloing in favor of wall-to-wall riffs, and these songs are better for that. “Reign of Death” is a highlight, and finds Ingraham and Fleming deftly juggling speedy verses with more groove-oriented breakdowns. Ingraham’s drumming is particularly monstrous on this intro, as well as the machine-gun blast of the following instrumental, “Witch Plague.”

About half the album is instrumental, in fact, and the songs that feature Fleming’s vocals tend to bury his curdled screams in the mix. But his performance on the final two tracks in particular — the steamrolling “Exorcist” and epic closer “The Once Sacred Gift of Life” — is more nuanced than the typical metal scream-fest.

— Brian McElhiney, The Bulletin