“There’s been a massive uptick in persecution, but it just looks different. It’s not like the Salem Witch trials now, it’s more like people being bullied or losing their jobs or having their livelihood threatened,” explains Jason Myers about the unfair treatment of witches in 2023.

Citing recent examples of friends being run out of town, canceled events, and being forced to quit their jobs inspired Myers, a practicing witch himself, to write “Rise Of The Witches”, a stirring call to other witches to be proud of who they are and to expel the misunderstanding of those who practice it.

The track is featured on Icarus Witch’s new concept album, No Devil Lived On, out now via Cleopatra Records. Myers explains that over 20 witches sung on the chorus of the song to give it more authenticity.

“‘Rise Of The Witches’ was meant as sort of a rebellious anthem to push back against this kind of tyranny to just say, we need to galvanize around this. Whether you believe in witchcraft or whether you’re agnostic, atheist, whatever faith you believe in or don’t believe in, you should still support people’s right to have their own faith. And when you step over that line, you have to push back and this song is sort of meant to give people a little more of a unification to let them know you’re not alone.”

No Devil Lived On is not just another album, on the Pittsburgh trad metal act’s sixth full-length, they introduce new influences to the band's repertoire by incorporating synths to give a spacey, sci-fi vibe to the album. 

“I’m not sure where that came from,” laughs Myers when asked where those influences came from. “It is different for sure. We’re fans of sci-fi, books, and stories, but traditionally our music has always been a little more steeped in gothic overtones or medieval overtones and more traditional metal settings. When this started coming together, lyrically I began playing with concepts of time travel and something I’ve always thought about throughout my life of is it possible?

“When I think of how technologically advanced we are now compared to where we were, say 20 years ago, it’s not unfathomable to think that 20, 50 years in the future that we can’t comprehend now might be commonplace, like traveling back in time.”

No Devil Lived On is loosely based on Aradia, the Gospel Of Witches. The book was published in 1899 by Charles Godfrey Leland and was influential in the development of the Pagan religion of Wicca. What drove the inspiration was Myers making contact with an entity named “Aradia” during a meditation.

Myers tells the story, “Around the time when we decided to really commit to creating a concept album, it was also the time I was taking some witchcraft courses. In one of the witchcraft classes, we had a meditation where you’re put into this room of your own creation where you’re asked to make contact with other entities. And one of the entities that made themselves known to me during that meditation was ‘Aradia’ and just the name. And this energy, I didn’t see a face, didn’t see details.”

This inspired the bassist to dive into the mythology of Aradia and how she became the heroine in the story produced in No Devil Lived On. Icarus Witch had all the time in the world to develop the concept. The first ideas for the album came right after 2018’s Goodbye Cruel World and then the world stopped in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This gave the band a chance to flesh out the songs, the story, and they decided to hold back on releasing it once the world opened up again and a flood of new releases hit the market.

Myers explains the rationale, “We’re like, ‘ok, we’ve waited this long, let’s sit back and let that wave ride.’ There were also some practical reasons for the delay. One of which is the actual length of time that it takes to manufacture vinyl specifically. Vinyl takes a bit longer [to produce]. When you try to coordinate the vinyl production and the CD production; when we turned it in and when turned our masters to the label, we just got in a queue at that point. Nobody will schedule an album until they’re holding the physical masters. So even though the album was technically done in the beginning of this year, we still had to wait basically another half a year for our turn to come up, for the vinyl to come out, and then the promotion cycle to happen.”

The pandemic made Icarus Witch become more self-sufficient, resulting in new skills being learned and allowed them to take a crack at self-producing the album.

“We recorded everything and produced everything ourselves this time,” divulges Myers. “Whereas in the past we would hire a third party producer or engineers to do the different recording aspects, this time we just split up the duties amongst the band. Quinn Lukas, our guitar player, recorded the bass and guitars in his home studio, and our singer Andrew D’Cagna has an actual recording studio in Ohio. So he recorded all the vocals and the drums because the drummer lives by him in Ohio. Basically, all of it was done remotely at that point in terms of sending files back and forth and giving the approval or not. We did everything in house except for the mixing and mastering.”

Icarus Witch pushed themselves creatively by composing their longest track to date – the 10 minute closer “Starseed Trilogy”. Even though it runs 10 minutes, the song doesn’t “feel” that long.

“You’re actually not the first to have said that, that it doesn’t feel as long as it is. And that’s a good compliment I think,” laughs Myers. “We’ve always been fans of progressive rock and progressive metal. Like I grew up listening to Yes and Rush, so it wasn’t uncommon for some of our favorite bands, even Iron Maiden, to have these massive 10 plus minute songs. And we’d never done it. So it was another one of those boxes that hadn’t been checked yet.”

“We actually had three songs, that’s why I called it the ‘Starseed Trilogy’, I saw a common bond that they could be organically combined,” he answers about how it was composed. “It took some filing around the edges until they dovetailed perfectly. It gave us something to challenge ourselves with how we can do this and still have it be interesting.”

With Icarus Witch now being around for 20 years and their first EP and full-length out in 2005, the band is planning some reissues now that No Devil Lived On is out.

“I would like to give a proper reissue to some of our back catalogue,” Myers replies. “It’s overdue. Most of it never came out on vinyl in the first place, and now there’s a market for it. Back then we didn’t even bother with it because it was expensive and there weren’t a lot of people collecting vinyl. Right now, vinyl outsells CDs most of the time. So I do want to do that. And that’s probably going to be one of my winter projects; putting together some of the art and going through old videos and things that I haven’t even looked at in decades,” he laughs.

Order No Devil Lived On on Bandcamp and find out more about Icarus Witch on their website.

(Photo - Aubrianna Myers)