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This band kind of came out of nowhere, with a demo of the month in Metal Hammer and then a release of this, their debut album. They have already been picked up by Nuclear Blast, who know a marketable band when they see one. The band comes across as maybe a bit gimmicky, since they are an all-girl band – a rarity in the metal community. But from one spin it is obvious this band has chops.

Burning Witches are very much mining a Painkiller vibe, with the pummeling heaviness, galloping speed, and wailing vocal lines. Opener "Black Widow" makes no bones about what it is aiming for, and the rest of the album is very much in this mold. The production is first-rate, the playing is rock-solid, and singer Seraina Telli has the requisite intensity for the stuff they are doing here.

That said, the songwriting here is highly conventional, and does not really do anything extraordinary. You pretty much get verse-chorus-verse-chorus and nothing else. The big sound and energy level really grab you, but the compositions can't sustain that interest. These songs all sound a lot alike, and they don't hold up that well to repeated listens. So this shows a lot of promise, but A-grade sound and playing cannot entirely make up for C-grade songs.