Label: Nuclear Blast Records
Release date: March 6, 2020
Production: V.O. Pulver & Marcel “Schmier” Schirmer
Album length: 52.24 min
Genre: Power Metal
Rating: 8.5 / 10
Burning Witches are a Swiss all-female heavy metal quintet who, in a relatively short time on the scene, have been incredibly driven and busy. In fact, they’re hitting a seriously high level of quality. And since the crew is made up of five girls, that deserves even more respect, because all-female bands in metal are an absolute rarity. Burning Witches keep progressing and climbing, album after album.. For the third record the band kept only three-fifths of its “Swissness,” since new singer Laura Guldemond and guitarist Sonia Nusselder, who joined the band in 2018, are Dutch. “Dance With The Devil” is a new adventure into a world of ten full-blooded heavy metal slaps in the face (twelve tracks in total, counting the intro and the added Manowar cover Battle Hymns).
The first question was how the girls would patch up the departure of the otherwise excellent singer Seraina Telli. Laura Guldemond’s vocal character is very close to her predecessor’s, but she delivers even a bit more variety in her vocal approach across the songs, which also widened the band’s creative space, so “Dance With The Devil” can boast the greatest compositional variety of all three albums. The new singer is also as explosive as you’d want, develops tremendous vocal power, and with beastly shrieking that even challenges Battle Beast singer Noora Louhimo, she brings to life on the album exactly what the band is really after. Black magic, the occult, villainy,…
On top of that, the band has taken another step up on the new album when it comes to songwriting and arranging. Performance-wise, too, Burning Witches come across as a much tighter unit on the new record, and the solos in particular, with Sonia leading the charge, are executed with even more bravura, bite and style. Even more committed.
The band isn’t bringing a revolution to metal. With their third album, Burning Witches cement their image as an offshoot of Euro power metal with strong, concise influences from Accept and Judas Priest (Warlock with Doro Pesch obviously belong in there too). With a superb production that’s razor sharp, with decisively pouting guitar phrases, the band keeps sounding very, very Germanic. So, no miracles to expect, just an extremely good and proud recycling of the classic metal stereotype according to the Germanic recipe, but this untamed witches’ gathering leaves no survivors, because they approach writing and playing with incredible fire and a kind of fervor that lets you feel the new album is a sort of tribute to the classic-era metal bands that inspired them to grow into what they offer with their three studio albums to date. It’s no surprise the girls tacked a cover of the cult Manowar classic Battle Hymn onto the end of the album, with special guests on the version being its author Ross H. Friedman and his Ross The Boss buddy, bassist Mike LePond, well known to prog metal fans as a member of Symphony X. A move that, with that choice of cover, only reinforces their credibility. Even the album cover looks Manowar-esque.
Anyone looking for sacred simplicity in metal, with just the right amount of bombast, a high dose of musicality and, above all, some solid kicks to the forehead, won’t go far wrong with Burning Witches and “Dance With The Devil”. Easily the band’s most mature achievement to date, one that cements Burning Witches’ status as rising stars on an otherwise crowded scene, which in power metal really said everything there was to say fifteen years ago.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
01. The Incantation
02. Lucid Nightmare
03. Dance With The Devil
04. Wings Of Steel
05. Six Feet Underground
06. Black Magic
07. Sea Of Lies
08. The Sisters Of Fate
09. Necronomicon
10. The Final Fight
11. Threefold Return
12. Battle Hymn
Line-up:
Laura Guldemond – vocals
Romana Kalkuhl – guitar
Sonia “Anubis” Nusselder – guitar
Jeanine Grob – bass
Lala Frischknecht – drums
Guest musicians:
Ross H. Friedman – guitar on track no. 12
Mike LePond – bass on track no. 12
