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John ‘5’ Lowery has a bit of a personality problem: he doesn’t seem to actually have one. Is he the Poundstretcher Eddie Van Halen from Dave Lee Roth’s 90s band? Marilyn Manson’s blank-eyed industrial-glam sidekick? The hack axeman helping the Scorpions, Ricky Martin and Salt-N-Pepa across the line?

Season Of The Witch suggests he’s all of these and none. There’s little to link the laboured bluegrass thrash of Black Grass Plague, the jazz inflections of Hell Haw or the Rob Zombie knock-off title track beyond their B-movie titles and a desire to show just how great a guitarist he is. Sure, he can play anything he turns his hand to, but so can a million other six-stringers, meaning Season Of The Witch is little more than a heap of hubble, bubble, toil and trouble.

Dave Everley has been writing about and occasionally humming along to music since the early 90s. During that time, he has been Deputy Editor on Kerrang! and Classic Rock, Associate Editor on Q magazine and staff writer/tea boy on Raw, not necessarily in that order. He has written for Metal Hammer, Louder, Prog, the Observer, Select, Mojo, the Evening Standard and the totally legendary Ultrakill. He is still waiting for Billy Gibbons to send him a bottle of hot sauce he was promised several years ago.