[dechecharge]

103

Artist: Witch Master General
Release: Discontent
Genre: Power/Thrash Metal
Country: Canada (Nepean, Ontario)
Bitrate: MP4 AAC
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Discogs page: https://www.discogs.com/release/1172396 ... Discontent

Actually the 3rd demo by Witch Master General. I got this demo after getting in touch with guitarist Daniel McNamara on facebook. After over 2 weeks he got the tape and sent me the rips via e-mail so it's his rip, not mine. He also sent me some info: Witch Master General had recorded a demo tape before releasing Winds Over Salem - I found such demo so good I decided to hunt down this one I'm posting - but it remained unreleased. This initial demo was actually made of two rehearsals that were merged into a single tape (only 30 were ever made, it consisted of October Frost, Antimatter, PsycoAnalysis, On The Warpath, Showerhead and 2 other tracks Dan couldn't remember their names, October Frost and On The Warpath were re-recorded for the Winds Over Salem demo). The song Western Plains was played live but never recorded in studio. After not achieving any success among the music industry they changed their name to Red Orchestra and released the song "African Raindance" in the compilation Capital Punishment. Thanks to Dan for this!!!
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1. Stangleweed
2. Red Orchestra
3. White Sand
4. Under The Flag Of Apathy

[blackwire]

This is the other guitarist (Mark) - a couple other notes ... the bands name was a reference to the Fates Warning song The Sorceress. He sings "witch finder general" but we changed it to master for obvious reasons. None of us knew anything about Witchfinder General except Randy C. as he ran a metal show on the local university station. The name was a bit of an issue, since most people would tell us the name did not match what we sounded like. We knew this and probably should have changed it sooner, but left it for various reasons. The change to Red Orchestra was singer/lyricist Randy C happening to name the one song Red Orchestra and the rest of us deciding to steal it for the band name too. Not so much success/no success as WMG, really just finally dropping a name we had never been 100% happy with.

Bands we played with: Sacred Reich, Forbidden, Whiplash, Disciples of Power. Other than Shock, the only other metal band playing around Ottawa then was Infra Red. They released a demo, not sure how widely distributed it was? They were our age and we played with them several times. we played in Toronto too.

We never actually broke up - a break after the Capital Punishment CD just kind of slowly turned into not ever playing again.

Albums I'd say were more influential than most for the band were: Awaken the Guardian - Fates Warning, Them - King Diamond, New World Order - Testament, Ride the Lightning, Master etc. . We all started as Maiden fans pre-band, thrash was in relatively early stages as we were forming. We started out as attempted thrash but other things crept in. We did not like being tagged as power metal, which may surprise some. The vocals were not thrash though obviously. I think we meant to sound heavier than we actually were. There was some prog in the sound from day one though.

A final note: our first demo (unreleased) was not a recording of rehearsals etc - we went to an actual studio in Gatineau and recorded the songs. The studio was low level and the engineer was an amateur , and it didnt sound very good. We just chose not to send it out. We did not like Winds Over Salem either, but decided it was at least more presentable. I think Randy has all this stuff, plus live recordings and video etc.

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