Burning Witches – The Witch Of The North
Release Date: 28th May 2021
Label: Nuclear Blast Records
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Genre: Metal, Heavy Metal.
FFO: Judas Priest, Savatage, Warlock, Huntress.
Review By: Kenny Newall
Swiss/Dutch Burning Witches have added Savatage’s ‘Hall Of The Mountain King’ as their bonus cover on fourth incantation, The Witch Of The North. This adds to their past three covers, Judas Priest (Jawbreaker), Dio (Holy Diver) and Manowar (Battle Hymn), which gives you a decent idea of what they sound like. With a modern sensibility and production they take their influences and give us an album worth lighting some old-school torches over and chasing down the misunderstood ugly in a mob frenzy. For those that do know, this is more of the same, not quite as heavy overall maybe, but close enough. And damn it, it’s one hexmonkey of an album.
Tainted Ritual, the first stand out track showcases the band as a whole. Decent musicianship, pretty standard songwriting, but it works and is lifted beyond the run of the mill to the burning windmill with Laura Guldemond’s superb vocals. Nine Worlds, another belter of a song showcases her Halford-esque vocal range and use of distortion.
The BIG track, though, is the pentagramic single, The Circle Of Five (video below). Maybe not the best song, it’s the one with the festival chorus. A similar feel to what must be another influence, Warlock’s All We Are, it has the stop playing and let the audience take it chorus. Not just a chant-a-long, but a bonding lyric, that will no doubt be sung by more than just five live.
Unfortunately it’s followed by Lady Of The Woods, a plodding power ballad. Power ballads, the Lemmy warts of the hard rock world for me seemed to just be a way for bands to get on MTV and have their knobs sucked back in the 80s, but as BW have no need of either, the album would certainly benefit from dropping it. They have an intro, outro and wee mid album score type interlude that breaks up the album dynamically and I have to say a half star has been taken off my rating because of LOTW.
Overall, The Witch Of The North has enough great songs and great moments in the others to make this, well, great. Even if LOTW, well, grates.
(4 / 5)
