ESBEN AND THE WITCH

“Looking for the light in the dark since 2008,” is how Esben and the Witch present themselves on their Bandcamp page, and indeed, their trajectory over these past fifteen years has been steered by that symbiotic duality. Moments of luminous, energetic rock clash with streaks of melancholy or even despair, in an almost gothic way, minus the inherent theatrical ethos the term often implies. A catharsis that is abundantly clear on their staggering new album, “Hold Sacred”, worth each and every one of the five years we waited for it to arrive. Story has it that part of this new opus was even written on an abandoned beach in a fishing village near Porto, so there hardly seems to be a better place for it to be presented besides Amplifest. Welcome home, then, Rachel, Thomas and Daniel.