The Thread in Between
Stygian Bough (Bell Witch + Aerial Ruin), Monkey3, 40 Watt Sun
Presented by Roadtrip to Outta Space, Arena, Vienna, Austria 20260129
Sometimes I am surprised by how much people might show up for a concert by something like Stygian Bough, the collaboration between Bell Witch and Aerial Ruin that already has released two albums. And do not get me wrong. What they do is absolutely brilliant. But I understand that it can be a niche taste within metal music, which is already a niche in itself. Anyways, when I bought my ticket in early January, the event was supposed to be at the kleine Halle, which has a capacity of 240 people. But when I got to the Arena, I realised it had been moved to the große Halle, which can hold over 900 people. And it was pretty much full. Of course, I guess the promoters have done an excellent job too (perhaps including Monkey3 was a good move), but it is still somewhat striking and contrasts heavily with other excellent funeral doom gigs where there were no more than 15 of us in the crowd.
40 Watt Sun
The US-Americans are on a European tour following the release of their latest album, Stygian Bough: Volume II (November 2025), and are accompanied by Patrick Walker, the mind behind the English band 40 Watt Sun, who opened the show. Walker is also responsible for Warning, one of the most renowned doom metal bands and those who created the masterpiece Watching From a Distance (2006), considered by many the best doom album ever composed. With 40 Watt Sun, Walker takes a slow but decisive turn towards what could be described as doom-alt-rock, incorporating also elements of singer-songwriter and English folk music. Although the first album, The Inside Room (2011), still clearly echoes doom metal, there is a greater warmth and colour, not only in the sound but also in the lyrics and even in the album artwork. In Wider than the Sky (2016), the change is even more pronounced, and the distortion that was still omnipresent in The Inside Room gives way to a cleaner sound, with a subtle fuzzy overdrive on the guitar. 40 Watt Sun also represents a more reflective and, to a certain extent, hopeful departure from Warning, where loss and hopelessness seemed unsolvable. This shift is very noticeable in the lyrics and can likewise be heard in the wider use of chords and the abandonment of riff-based musical ideas. What has indeed persisted throughout Walker’s career is the use of long, minimalist, and repetitive musical structures, yet always with a twist; the extensive use of 8/8 time signatures (3+3+2); and, of course, his powerful and deep singing voice, which he uses in a very melancholic and intensely emotional, yet intimate way.
On this occasion, Walker performed without his band; it was just him and his clean guitar that captivated an attentive crowd. Of course, this required adapting the musical arrangements of several of his songs, especially the ones from his first album, such as “Carry Me Home”. But Walker has been performing solo for at least a few years now, and he clearly knows how to handle it. The use of open tunings, the elasticity of the songs’ tempos, and the combination of strumming and one-note fingerpicking ostinatos on the guitar were all key elements here. In fact, it was fascinating to hear at times almost absolute silence in the spaces between those chords. Thus, accompanied by some tea and a dose of humour between songs, the musician went through the four full-length albums of 40 Watt Sun, closing with “Marazion”, after which the audience replied with resounding applause. By the way, offstage I had the honour of meeting and chatting briefly with Walker, who is not only a tremendous artist but also a very kind, easy-going guy with a great sense of humour. I also took the opportunity to get a T-shirt from “Pour Your Love”, the opening track on his latest album, Little Weight (2024).
Monkey3
After 40 Watt Sun, the Swiss band Monkey3 took the stage, joining this Viennese date as co-headliners. Simultaneously, the evening marked the kickoff of their own tour, which will take them across most of Europe until the end of April. The band devotes itself to stoner and psychedelic rock, and already has eight studio albums and two live records to its name. Its music features a purely instrumental approach, a solid live sound, certainly a good dose of guitar and synth solos, and the controlled but noticeable use of scales with augmented second intervals, which differ from those derived from Roman ecclesiastical modes or the blues/pentatonic scales. So, by including elements outside of the Anglo-Saxon rock canon, they create in some way a “trippy” effect often sought after in the genre.
Stygian Bough
Just before 22 hours, I moved to the front row, where I could take a look at Stygian Bough‘s pre-show preparations. On the right was Erik Moggridge with his Les Paul-style guitar connected to a large pedalboard and two guitar amps+speakers. Centre back was Jesse Shreibman with a drum set that had been assembled before the whole event. On the left was Dylan Desmond with his 7-string Ibanez BTB bass, also a huge pedalboard, and a bass amp+speaker (8×10) as well as two guitar amps+speakers. The truth is that I only knew one of the entities of Stygian Bough before, Bell Witch, but after reading up a bit prior to the concert, I found out that Erik Moggridge (Aerial Ruin) had been collaborating with the band since its beginnings and had even contributed vocals to the iconic album Mirror Reaper (2017).* The name of this collaboration comes, as the artists explain, from The Golden Bough by anthropologist James Frazer. Although questionable for adopting a cultural evolutionist paradigm (strongly criticised by scholars such as Franz Boas), his work is interesting for presenting religious beliefs not as absolute truths but as cultural phenomena. Frazer draws on an ancient Italian myth, in which any slave could challenge the reigning priest-king (Rex Nemorensis), but only if he first managed to steal the golden bough from the sacred tree within the temple. In this vein, Desmond, Schreibman, and Moggridge explain the origin of the collaboration as follows:
“The golden bough made a king out of a slave only to find they were now enslaved to a different sort of tyranny, always stalking them from the darkest shadows of their imagination. From this perspective, the ‘golden bough’ is better understood as a deception casting darkness. Thus, Stygian Bough”.
The musicians also state that this bough symbolises an inseparable thread, in this case, inhabiting the space between life and death. Indeed, the aspirant had to first take the bough as a magical act of vulnerability before proceeding to attack. In this sense, the musicians see this collaboration as an image of that bough, linking two separate entities that nevertheless give life to the same presence, the same stygian musical entity. So when, without any announcement or introduction, the first riffs of “Waves Became the Sky” began to sound, everything fell perfectly into place. Moggridge’s clean vocals, along with his distorted guitar work and clean passages, fit perfectly with Bell Witch’s mournful sound, creating something that is more than the sum of its parts. And here I would like to emphasise the clean vocals. Generally speaking, funeral doom relies more on guttural vocals. But this turn towards predominantly clean vocals in the context of funeral doom is excellently done and frankly brilliant. Thus, after the opening track, the performance continued with a flawless playthrough of the entire Stygian Bough: Volume II album: “King of the Wood” (literally the Rex Nemorensis), “From Dominion”, and finally “The Told and the Leadened” to close the show. About an hour of the best that funeral doom has to offer nowadays.
Notes
* For those interested, there is a scientific paper that analyses how tonality works as a sonic analogue for the grieving process in Bell Witch’s Mirror Reaper.
PS: If you have made it this far, allow me to also mention that an academic article I wrote on Chilean doom metal and the scene’s notions of the end of the world and the idea of australness was published a few days ago. Unfortunately, it is not open access, but here is the link: https://doi.org/10.1386/mms_00179_1
Live version of “From Dominion” in Warsaw.