Now here is a surprise. Florida’s Hellwitch formed in 1984 and managed to get one album out (Syzygial Miscreancy; a Watchtower-in-overdrive gem from 1990) and a bunch of EPs before vanishing into obscurity just before the millennium. This comeback is a truly invigorating, fast-as-hell pileup of technical thrash and energetic death metal. Even if this doesn’t go down as a classic, there are more deranged riffgoblins here than you could chase down in a fowl-legged Russian witch house.

If we compare it to its predecessor, there are some fortuitous developments, which will have improved the band for all but the most perverse obscurantists. Whilst that one went all out to dazzle with its speed and widdliness, like Eddie Van Halen guesting with Mekong Delta, Omnipotent Convocation takes a leap both forwards and backwards to a timelessly primitive age, drafting in a hefty early Death influence. (This is evidenced by their choice of cover version: Infernal Death). Having said that, the influence was always there; it’s just that this one’s immeasurably superior production really rams home the band’s harsh, bludgeoning sound whilst also managing to sound as if the recording equipment was in the same country as the Hellwitch themselves. The latter in particular is a real bonus.

So let us pick through some of this album’s highlights. Hell, there are tracks here Witch leave you genuinely awed. Slought to Beguile is built around a preposterously energetic, devilish thrash riff, which sounds like Holy Moses circa 1987 after a twenty-two year session at the gym. It takes on the form of mechanized, pounding melodeath (like Hypocrisy eating barbed wire) and emerges as joyous thrash again like a booze-soaked Alien from out of its ribcage. Opiatic Luminance has a cackling, undulating groove, like a heavily industrialised reworking of some jabbering folk metal (perhaps !T.O.O.H! is a comparison here), which is crossed with dense death metal and jackhammer soloing that interacts contortedly with its rhythm section like Kirk Hammet does on Metallica’s One. The unison wizardry of Final Approach, with a hellish, rattling energy, reminds me of Melechesh’s Apkallu Counsel. For those who’ve heard that song (one of my top ten metal tracks of the decade), you’ll realise what a compliment that is. And if you haven’t… do it now! Then come back to read more about Hellwitch. If not, fine, I’m nearly finished anyway.

I’m not sure what anyone else could want from a metal record. The solos are screeching, the riffs are monumental technical death-thrash. The vocals sometimes take on hysterical falsetto shapes like Vio-Lence, sometimes gibbering black metal gurns. It is brimming with ideas. Damn, this is great.