Upon hearing the first 10 seconds of any Margarita Witch Cult song, one thing becomes apparent: these guys love Black Sabbath. But while they acknowledge a debt to their fellow Brummies, they’re keen not to be lumped as just another Birmingham band.
“Birmingham is always shedding its skin,” bassist Jim Thing explains. “We’ve been around long enough to have seen things like [mid-2010s indie scene] B-Town, where bands like Superfood were going to be the next big thing. The older you get, you become more aware of the pitfalls of aligning yourself too much with a particular scene. We wanted to do our own thing.”
Each band member – vocalist/guitarist ‘Screamin’ Scott Vincent, bassist Jim and drummer George Casual – had played in other bands before MWC formed in 2020. While Sabs are an obvious influence, it was actually another pioneering stoner group that helped kickstart their careers: Monster Magnet. Vincent’s other band Table Scraps toured with Dave Wyndorf’s psychedelic warriors in 2019, and when he got back from that tour he knew he wanted to do something riffier and heavier.
Margarita Witch Cult’s 2023 self-titled debut album built on a Sabbath template with lashings of Motörhead and Alice Cooper, and Vincent admits that the pop-rock chops of Desmond Child also had a hand in his songwriting approach. It paid off. Their brand of rumbling thunder quickly picked up a fan base, and even came somewhat full circle when they were invited to support Monster Magnet last year.
“I can call Dave Wyndorf a mate,” Vincent marvels. “I was listening to Monster Magnet when I was seventeen, and now he’s covered one of my songs [Monster Magnet covered Motorcycle (Straight To Hell) by Table Scraps in 2021].”
Wyndorf isn’t the only heavyweight rock star to endorse MWC. Back in June, the band were interviewed and featured as part of the livestream for the Black Sabbath: Back To The Beginning show.
“With everything that’s happened since [with Ozzy’s passing] you realise just how big that was,” Vincent says. “Being part of it in any way was incredible. It was amazing watching ourselves on an iPhone in a bar in Dresden.”
Margarita Witch Cult are clearly going places. With their new album Strung Out In Hell, they’ve honed the Sabbathian template even further.
“We considered just calling it ‘More’, because we didn’t change the scenery too much, [we] just leaned in on what worked before,” Jim Thing says.
“When I moved to Birmingham as a teenager, I assumed every band was going to sound like Black Sabbath,” Vincent admits. “It took twenty-five years for me to make one that actually did.”
Strung Out In Hell is out now via Heavy Psych Sounds.
