Burning Witches: Bringing Energy From The Darkness
How does a power metal band gain more power in their music? For Swiss band BURNING WITCHES, their power comes from their ever evolving themes and lyrics that they develop into their music, no matter the changes that happen in and out of the band. With each album, and member change, the quintet of queens have only gotten stronger and stronger, their sound becoming darker, grittier, and even more powerful. For the band’s next album, Inquisition, they wanted to evoke the darkness of the Inquisition period in history and the ferocious power the Catholic Church had over people’s fears and paranoia during that period. Sitting with vocalist Laura Guldemond, she expands about the album, the themes, the upcoming shows, and the first single off the record, High Priestess Of The Night.
“High Priestess of the Night is kind of the happy song on the album.” Laura explains when describing the first single. “It’s about resilience, it’s about freedom. I thought it was cool to imagine a witch, soaring through the night sky, being badass. You know, just taking her freedom, basically. Most songs are actually about what happened in the time of the Inquisition, which was an organization, a religious organisation, really long ago from the Catholic Church, and they would really try to get rid of all the heretics and all the occult stuff. It really comes down a bit to everyone being different. To them, if you were a bit different, you would be suspicious, and also if they catch you, you would confess to something you didn’t do just to save your ass. But then you also needed to point out to someone else who maybe was a heretic, or else they would still kill you. It was a bit of an anxious time where everyone started to be very suspicious of one another and afraid of the Inquisition. So one song on Inquisition is about shame, another song is about the possibility of losing your soul completely, never having existed at all. It’s just a lot of fear and paranoia in that era.”
“Someone pointed out to me the other day that the themes within Inquisition are something that’s relevant for a lot of things that are going on in the world,” she expands further when asked how the fear of the past could resonate with the fear of today. “Where I live, it’s still pretty chill, nothing is really going on or nothing as intense as I think the things that happened during the Inquisition. But of course it’s always relevant, somewhere in the world there is always something like that going on with a group of people in power that want people to do exactly what they want. It’s always like that somewhere in the world, right? But I think for people in personal lives, it’s also pretty relevant because I think these days, we’re especially good at making ourselves a bit stressed with things that we want ourselves to do. So I think a lot of people probably also have this problem. You just want yourself to do certain things, and if you don’t do it, it’s not good enough, you’re stressed already, and sometimes it’s not even important, like doing this one thing on your to do list, for example, just a random thing. For me personally, it always has a big impact on me, you know. So I don’t know, for everyone is different. I think this is what we try to show in our video clips for Inquisition, the whole band is torturing me. What it shows is that you can have your own Inquisition inside your mind.”
Inquisition is to be BURNING WITCHES’ sixth album, with their last album, The Dark Tower, released back in May 2023. As with any record, the group constantly evolve and progress their sound, and it’s no different with this record, as Laura explains. “I keep hearing that we got a bit more fierce and a bit more heavy, and I can’t really put my finger on it myself, maybe because I’m so close to the whole process that I don’t hear it as much. But yeah, people that are further away from it all. I personally would say it’s a good mix of a lot of things we did in the past. So it has a bit of everything within this album, it has the heavier songs, it has a ballad, you know? There’s everything in between, and maybe unconsciously, I started singing a bit more aggressively for this album because it’s a dark theme. I really hope, of course, they love it. I hope fans react to Inquisition in a similar way that I would react to an album I love, that they just can’t stop listening to it, that it’s one of the best albums they ever heard. That’s what I hope, fingers crossed.”
So what is next for BURNING WITCHES once the album is out? The band have a UK tour coming up in January 2026, performing in London, Birmingham, and Manchester, planning to showcase the music of Inquisition in these performers. “They can expect an energetic show,” Laura smiles as she answers our final question. “We sometimes wonder, if we see a new audience, we have the feeling they’re looking more excited and ready to participate. We sometimes have that feeling, and we are always wondering, is this normal? If they see a new band, is it because we’re all girls? I don’t know, they definitely expect some energy, some singing along. So I hope people listen a bit to the music so they can sing along already. I just hope they leave with more energy. I’m really excited that we are actually going back to the UK. We had really good success in the album charts in the UK, for example with Dance With The Devil back in 2020. I’m just finally happy we can finally go back there. I hope we can make a lot of people happy too.”
Inquisition is out now via Napalm Records. View this interview, alongside dozens of other killer bands, in glorious print magazine fashion in DS123 here:
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