Witch Hunt - Blood-Red States [12 inch] (Cover Artwork)

Witch Hunt

Blood-Red States [12 inch] (2006)

Profane Existence


Profane Existance is one of the seminal anarcho and crust punk labels in the United States and in 2006 they released Blood-Red States by Witch Hunt. Witch Hunt is a four-piece from Philadelphia, PA with a sound that they humorously describe as sounding like a fuck session (it's great when bands have a sense of humor), though known for their heavy, melodic guitars and dueling female/male vocals.

Witch Hunt offer socially aware lyrics with a blast of balls-out hardcore. Blood-Red States is their second album on Profane with their first being ...As Priorities Decay. This album is a definite improvement over their first, as they really seem to have discovered the perfect sound for the band. An addition of a second guitar has really helped to bolster their sound and made them that much louder and heavier.

Blood-Red States opens with "Desperation," a blistering attack on organized religion and the people who blindly follow without question. The band blasts through 10 songs in just under 25 minutes and never misses a beat. In under those 25 minutes they go through such topics as people who wear a blindfold through life and never question what they're told ("Blindfold"), the poor soldiers who return from Iraq not physically, but emotionally scarred ("War Coma"), as well as the people responsible for the situation we are in ("Blood-Red States").

My only small problem with the album is that the band plays so fast they have to repeat many of the verses to give the songs a "normal lengh" (the songs are, on average, two to two and a half minutes long). Other than that, this album is a perfect dose of hardcore and I highly recomend it to anyone who is a fan of good music.