Funeral doom band Bell Witch surprised fans last week with an announcement that their new album, Future's Shadow Part 1: The Clandestine Gate, would be released that Friday (April 21). The album is the first in a planned trilogy, comprised of one mammoth 83-minute song and it has had Twitter buzzing with all sorts of reactions ever since.
We're going to share some of the best reactions with you, but first...
Who Are Bell Witch?
Bell Witch are a funeral doom band based out of Seattle, Washington, and it's only natural that such a gloomy group would arise from the area of the U.S. known for grey skies and lots of rain. They formed in 2010, originally comprised of bassist/vocalist Dylan Desmond, who remains in the group, and drummer/vocalist Adrian Guerra, who died in 2015.
After issuing an eponymous demo in 2011, Bell Witch released the six-track Longing full length in 2012, followed by the four-song Four Phantoms in 2015, both with Guerra. In the wake of his passing, drummer/vocalist Jesse Shreibman joined in 2015 and was first featured in 2017's epic Mirror Reaper, which was the first Bell Witch record to solely feature a song 83 minutes in length.
Regarded as an instant funeral doom classic, Mirror Reaper garnered tons of attention when it came out and fans haven't stopped clamoring about Bell Witch ever since.
What Is This Album About? Are There Really Two More Releases Coming?
"Eventually, the end of the last album will be looped around to the first to make a circle," prefaces Desmond, "It can be continuously looped, like a day cycle. This would be dawn. The next one would be noon. The following one would be sundown, with dawn and sundown both having something of night."
In other words, if the other two installments are like this one, Bell Witch's trilogy has the potential to push the four-hour mark.
This trilogy is centered around the idea of eternal return, a concept Desmond picked up while reading The Gay Science, one of many works by influential German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who is most frequently associated with nihilism.
Wikipedia defines this concept as "time repeats itself in an infinite loop, and that exactly the same events will continue to occur in exactly the same way, over and over again, for eternity."
Bell Witch, "The Clandestine Gate"
What Is Twitter Saying?
There have been plenty of mixed reactions on Twitter. Some people are merely amused at the song's runtime, while others have expressed how little patience they have for such exhaustive, expressive works of aching, agonizing doom metal.
Regardless, it's not very often you see a funeral doom artist trending on Twitter, so they're doing something right, at the very least.
Check out all the reactions below and get your copy of Future's Shadow Part 1: The Clandestine Gate here. You can read the lyrics to the song near the bottom of the page as well.
The Humorous Reactions
Bell Witch Trending = Mind Blown
People Who Think They're Too Cool to Listen Just Because It's Long
Fans Who Love It
Bell Witch, "The Clandestine Gate" Lyrics
Reflected whisper of me, a drowned ruse
Shallow dug in a pulsing maze
Deafened foe
I see- glowing in a labyrinth of waves
The aired specter, deception of the light
That I follow
Sculpted emptiness of all things
Held in shade, cast by the spark
Returning veil
Hollow specter bleeding on the dark,
The fleeting breath in the returning light
That I follow
Incessant wheel of Time, Dawn’s bodies
Formless waves frozen in night
Immutable eyes
Stare infinite and squander sight
Gaze backwards but the waxing light,
That I follow
The moment’s hands eluded by that which time astrays
Scorch the flames of tomorrows to ashes by today,
A lifetime’s shadow
Under wingless wind to flight, unborn memory array
That echoes in forever, decay bloomed of the light
That I follow
The greatest weight, the breathed wind blown gone
What innumerable shudders of the recurring past
Open ahead
What matter of a flown moment shall spread last
In blooming decay under the climbing light
That I follow
The greatest weight, this recurring dawn
The greatest weight, falling glass the rising gate
Of a sightless phantom,
Sullen butcher, the fleeing horizon that forever escapes
Crashing wave of chariots, arrows of the light
That I follow
The moment, if ascent from the sinking blindness
Would remove the barbs from their hold
Emerging spring
A phantom forest rises in the dawn’s cold
Bleeding wounds pulse in the light
That I follow
If water could stand, prehensive stone sea
An arrow loosed at forever will soon crash
As blind waves
Climbing rain light throned, the wind shuts
Ten thousand gates- mirrored graves of dawn
Blinded foe
I hear- in walls ravens lead upon
Beneath the warless chariot of blinding light
That I follow
Unhallowed ubiquitous grasp
Hold everything to the light
That I follow
Dawn shrouding the void to pass
That when daylight comes- arrows of birth loose
And Death rains
In the imbrued dawn of springs wound
Worms pulse the breathless veins
Of permeation’s throne
Below and above the mountains reign
Enfleshing the spineless ribs of light
That I follow
No- but striking life, dawns phantom truth
Climbing to darkness shedding the light
That I follow
Death’s waking crown a blinding shore
Breaking waves reaching above
The beginning
Of the end of night it grew of
Stone organ, purging in the light
That I follow
Purging storm, clandestine gate, the glare escapes
Carving mountains, pulsing gale, the light reappears
The world’s worn
Skin pile folds, in the distance birth nears
In sinking blackness under waves of light
That I follow
An edge above time, heaven’s spire
The precipitous tip of Death’s sight, soon
Still air, unshadow the miser stone,
Time, wind into the world of dust
Falling, climbing
Hold untouched a fleeting breath’s cusp
Of recurring eternity, the rising light
That I follow
(Tooth of predation)
The Down-stroking rapacious eye of doom
In the diadem of waves through the light
That I follow
