They were a band with a typical early '80s British sound. They extracted much of what they did from Sabbath and they did it extremely well. Of course they were not as heavy as Cathedral are, but there is no problem hearing the influences on there. The songs are sometimes faster, but the riffs are similar. Witchfinder General also had lots of melody and GOOD melody at that. They had that groove, and they had the lyrics to match the music. "Gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme beer" and "Let's trip on LSD" being memorable lines. if you are at all interested in the roots of stoner doom in general and in particular, Cathedral, you need this one.

By looking at the cover of this album, you might be fooled into thinking that any band that descends to showing a woman's tits on an album cover is doing so because that's all they've really got going for them. Not in this case - for Witchfinder General, it's a perfect extension of the music. Witchfinder General's style is closer to Black Sabbath, in a psychedelic stoner-rock-metal kind of way - the band glorified mindless sex and drug use to the point of self-destructive nihilism, and occasionally threw in an 'evil' song for good measure (musically, think of mid-era Trouble and you'll be close).

The rhythm section of Woolfy Trope (bass) and Graham Ditchfield (drums) laid a good foundation for guitarist Phil Cope's excellent Iommi-inspired riffing, but Cope's much more adept and energetic soloing added a bit more of a modern flair to the Sabbath-esque sound. The most unique facet of the band, though, was frontman Zeeb Parkes' vocals - he uses some combination of nasal whine and indistinct mumbling that actually comes off quite a bit better than that description - truly unique, and something that must be heard to be understood.

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