https://youtu.be/jEroZcWhXRQ

Band info

Band: Shrinewitch
Album: ‘Black Sacrist‘
Released: October 31st, 2025
Genre: raw black/doom, acoustic bm
Location: US

Review

Across many cultures, the end of the year is near, which usually comes with a sense of renewal; a self-analytic look at where we stand, what we wish to improve, or what we hope to leave behind. Yet this idea often assumes a freedom that not many of us have. Structural conditions affecting the majority of the population that lie beyond individual control. But we resist and fight. Experiences, damage done, that we can’t repair or leave behind. But we remember and refuse to let them fall back.

This is why ‘Black Sacrist‘, the new album by the solo project Shrinewitch, is a fitting choice to say goodbye to yet another horrible Western calendar year. The record uses music as a tool to reckon with the harm left by the Catholic Church and its unerasable wounds. Personal ones you can hear in Hiyaraba Acatalama‘s tunes.

Pipe organs, distant bells, and acoustic guitars mark the instrumental tracks, serving as ritualistic interludes that lead into raw black metal eruptions. The intentionally lo-fi, degraded production reinforces a sense of decay and an unsettling atmosphere, evoking the dark cadence of witchcraft – a spiritual path the artist turns to. Lyrically, ‘Black Sacrist‘ cracks open a lifelong trauma, helping the artist with the grief process of her sister’s death, and the strange treatment of the circumstances around it. A necessary catharsis for Shrinewitch, steering away from the Catholic church.

What we have before us today isn’t just another Shrinewitch release. It is an essential piece. Hiyaraba Acatalama‘s rejection of institutions that create trauma and call it faith. The testament of a wound that has not healed, but was finally named.

Other links and platforms:

BC: https://shrinewitchcoven.bandcamp.com/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/_shrinewitch_/