Comprised of founding members Kristian Bell (vocals) and Gianni Honey (drums) and featuring Daniel Rumsey (bass), along with newest member Mark Breed (keyboards, guitar), the now Brighton, UK-based quartet The Wytches can actually trace its origins to Bell’s and Honey’s previous band together, The Crooked Canes, a Peterborough, UK-based band that the duo have publicly dismissed as being “really adolescent and embarrassing.” After the founding duo played n a few other locally based bands, they moved to Brighton for school and posted an ad for a bassist. Daniel Rumsey, a Dorsey, UK-born singer/songwriter and frontman of Dan Rumsey and The Bitter End, Fall Victim and The Voyage Andromeda was the only person to respond to the ad.
Initially formed as The Witches, the trio changed their name to The Wytches to make the band more searchable on Google. The then trio’s 2014 debut effort Annabel Dream Record was release to critical praise across the blogosphere, and as a result the then trio embarked on a wild, whirlwind period of national and international touring, which helped influenced the newly constituted quartet’s highly-anticipated and recently released follow up, All Your Happy Life.
Reportedly, All Your Happy Life draws from the experiences the band had while touring — including reading a ton of Tolstoy on the tour bus, listening to Elliott Smith, tons of live, underground metal sets and observation small-town English life with completely new eyes. And as you’ll hear on the album’s second and latest single “Crest of Death,” is a furious, bilious and scathing track that’s split into two distinct parts — a screamo/hardcore intro in which Bell’s vocal are paired with dirge-like guitar chords and the song’s anthemic, shout to the rafters chorus and a down-tempo, fucked psychedelia. While evoking a desperate howl into an cold, indifferent void, the song manages to express a bored, nihilistic shrug.
