Photo by Davide TisoKaryn Crisis has long been hailed as one of metal's most iconic female voices. After her band Crisis ended in 2006, she obscured herself from view, withdrawing form the metal scene in order to focus on more spiritual pursuits and emerging only to record guest vocals on a couple of Ephel Duath albums. Earlier this year, though, she decided to return to the land of the living, inspired by a chance meeting in Tuscany with a spirit named Araida. The result, Gospel of the Witches, is a powerful cross-genre entity that's steeped in the occult and toys with gothic romanticism, buoyed by Crisis's fluid vocals—one moment demonic, one moment ethereal.In this new project, she's joined by her husband, Ephel Duath's Davide Tiso, on guitar, Immolation's Ross Dolan bass and backing vocals and Bob Vigna on guitar, and Tombs/Vaura drummer Charlie Schmid. Century Media released the band's debut album, Salem's Wounds, earlier in 2015, and they've just released a new video for the song "The Ascent."As Karyn says of the video, "The Ascent' is about the transformative ancient rite of Death and Resurrection. It also alludes to the wisdom attained through attuning to the nature of energies which often appear to us as illusions of opposites. In pen and ink I drew a storyboard of the video that I sent to Bob Vigna, who filmed and edited the entire video.I was inspired by a story authored by Carlo Napolitano where a character seeking answers to the Great Mysteries was hung upside down on a tree, with a mask tied to his face, gaining a previously unknown view of the world around him as pagan rituals took place around him. Bob elevated these ideas and turned them into a cohesive storyline that's both tangible and earthly, dreamy and spiritual."Kim Kelly is downing ergot on Twitter.