Burning Witches is at its best when they go one of two specific directions: either leaning fully into the more theatrical aspects of their sound, which is what made ‘The Witch of the North‘ their best album so far, or focusing on all-out aggression. The latter is exactly what makes ‘Inquisition’ such an entertaining listen. What’s nice is that the increased aggression hasn’t gone at the expense of the melodic sensibilities that have increasingly pushed the band’s traditional heavy metal sound towards power metal territories in recent years. If you’re sick of the pretentiousness in modern power metal, give this album a chance.

Through the years, most notably since fantastic singer Laura Guldemond joined the band, Burning Witches has been a great example of a band evolving their sound by simply be getting better at what they already do. No one will mistake ‘Inquisition’ for a release from a different band than the one on their 2017 debut album, but they have learned how to inject enough variation into largely mid-tempo material to hold a listener’s attention over the length of an album. Having someone with seemingly endless vocal possibilities helps, but the songwriting is simply at a much higher level these days as well.

While I wouldn’t quite call ‘Inquisition’ borderline thrash metal, songs like the relatively uptempo ‘Burn in Hell’, the almost USPM-ish ‘In for the Kill’, and the crunchy opener ‘Soul Eater’ would not sound out of place on a relatively melodic thrash metal album. The rhythm guitars of Romana Kalkuhl and Courtney Cox sound massive and have just the right amount of bite to them. There is some cool lead guitar work that gives some of the songs a bit of a wild edge, while the layering of melodic themes is reminiscent of the more aggressive end of the contemporary German power metal spectrum.

One interesting thing is that the more aggressive leanings of ‘Inquisition’ make the more traditional heavy metal tracks stand out more than they would otherwise. ‘High Priestess of the Night’ is notably lighter, but works really well as a breather, and that goosebumps-induing pre-chorus elevates it considerably, while ‘The Spell of the Skull’ really gives Guldemond space to excel. ‘Inquisition’ might even be at its best when both approaches are combined. ‘Shame’ marries a punchy, riffy foundation with very cool melodic vocal and guitar ideas, and the intense closer ‘Mirror, Mirror’ moves from thrashy to theatrical with admirable ease.

Although time will have to tell whether ‘Inquisition’ has the lasting appeal to me that ‘The Witch of the North’ has had, it is pretty much the perfect presentation of what Burning Witches can be. The album is exactly as long as it should be, the performances by everyone involved are great – I would even go as far to say that this is Lala Frischknecht’s best recorded drum performance to date – and the songs make use of all of the band’s strengths. If you aren’t familiar with the music of the band, ‘Inquisition’ makes for an excellent introductory release.

Recommended tracks: ‘Shame’, ‘Burn in Hell’, ‘Mirror, Mirror’, ‘In for the Kill’