Burning Witches: Embrace The Darkness
The Dark Tower is the latest album on new label Napalm Records from BURNING WITCHES and it sees the band’s heavy metal sound take a darker turn but still remains as high octane as ever with a few surprises thrown in there too. To celebrate the related of the album, we caught up with vocalist Laura Guldemond to hear all about The Dark Tower and all manner of things related to BURNING WITCHES.
Laura starts things off by telling us about The Dark Tower and what inspired the album, which is a darker affair than their previous material. “It’s actually all about horrible things but in a fun and entertaining way. It’s a bit creepy The Dark Tower. It’s like any haunted castle and had this vibe that’s on the cover. All the songs are basically to do with the story of Countess Bathory, who was the first recorded serial killer in history. We just really wanted to go a bit more dark.”
As it turns out, BURNING WITCHES have wanted to take their music in a more macabre direction for a while now, as Laura explains. “We wanted to do that. We felt like we we needed it after the last few albums, we said now let’s go darker!”
The Dark Tower follows the band’s last album The Witch Of The North and Laura went on to elaborate on how the music of BURNING WITCHES has evolved in that period. “Since the last album, we wanted it to be a bit dark again, of course, but also it has some elements of the last albums too so it’s a bit of a combination. Larissa [Ernst, guitars] and Romana [Kalkuhl, guitars] did these really cool guitar harmonies together like JUDAS PRIEST style.”
The Dark Tower is produced by Schmier from thrash legends DESTRUCTION and Laura tells us about working with him on the album and what he brought to the process. “Yeah, he’s a creative person, and it’s just really, really great to have someone in the studio that didn’t hear the songs too much before, because if you work on a song yourself for a long time, you get a bit of tunnel vision because of that sometimes.”
In appreciation of two heavy metal greats, The Dark Tower also features covers of by I Wanna Be Somebody by W.A.S.P and Shot In The Dark by OZZY OSBOURNE and Laura tells us how much fun it was to pay tribute with the band’s versions. “Both are cool songs. I just love W.A.S.P! Personally, I think it’s the first old school metal bands I started listening to. For me it’s my first love. I hope I did the vocals justice. Blackie Lawless has such great vocals! It was lots of fun to do and we love the Prince of Darkness, so we thought it was a cool song to do for this album too.”
The lineup of BURNING WITCHES has also changed for the time being. With guitarist Larissa Ernst expecting a baby, Courtney Cox from THE IRON MAIDENS has filled in for her. “It’s great, we’ve known her a long time actually, she did a cool solo on one of our songs before and we just kept in contact and Romana talked a lot with her,” Laura explains about the shift in the band’s lineup. “We saw each other on tour. We toured together along the east coast of the US and it was really nice. It was fun going on tour with THE IRON MAIDENS, it was good fun, and she’s an awesome musician too. So when we needed to ask someone, we already knew that she would help us out and luckily she said yes.”
The songs on The Dark Tower are ready made for the live arena and Laura is excited to perform them live. “It will be a mix but there will definitely be some new songs. Of course the singles and maybe some surprises in there too!”
When it comes to talk of the highlights of her time in BURNING WITCHES, Laura plumps for some memorable live shows. “I have to say, the first show I did when I joined them, it was on my birthday so I can’t deny that was one of the highlights. Touring America is pretty recent and we also got to go to Latin America. It was just so cool to see new places. We also did a show and it was above two thousand metres, which is really special because if you’re not used to it, you wouldn’t have enough oxygen, so you could definitely feel it!”
We finish our time with Laura as she elaborates on her favourite witches of all time in tribute to the band’s name. “I really enjoyed the modern remake of Sabrina The Teenage Witch. I really love the modern one, it’s fun. Yennefer from The Witcher too, she’s kind of an outcast and she really worked her way up. She’s kind of a troubled person that just fights for her right to be there and she turns out to be very powerful but it took her a lot of trouble.”
The Dark Tower is out now via Napalm Records.
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