Stormwitch
Season of the Witch

The same day as Scanner released their much celebrated comeback album, Stormwhich another eighties band released their comeback album. The news of which had the metal nostalgics drooling heavily and since it was January and very cold their drool ended up freezing their feet to the ground, leaving them immobile. In the end all those nostalgians freeze to death in the cold dark January night with only the stars for company. With the nostalgics out of the way, are there any other people who might help these ageing Germans afford to buy the food necessary to keep them alive?

Well, it depends but I suppose that there are some that may like it, if you like power metal, AOR, classic hardrock and don’t shy away from blatant copies of other bands you might find this album very interesting. Some may however say that the album is a tad incoherent and I am bound to agree as the album lacks a clear direction and brings out music that could have been from Toto, Hammerfall, Billy Idol or something thereabout. The band has been around for a while and done ten albums including this one, one would believe that during all these years the should have found a style of their own but this album doesn’t seem to indicate that, instead they are borrowing songs left, right and centre. There is variation but the incoherency takes away the point of that and the strange thing is that they manage to make a short album that is incoherent, that is not the easiest thing.

The album has only nine tracks in a regular version, the CD-digipak has two bonus tracks that don’t really contribute much and without the bonus the album plays for less than 40 minutes. It isn’t a particularly interesting album and unlike their fellow Germans Scanner they have failed to recapture and renew the magic they had in the distant past and feel more like ageing musicians trying to recapture glories long past, well two of them are while the new guys try to ride other people’s success I guess. But with the fans already drooled to death in a cold January night, there isn’t that many people left that could be interested in this album as it feels like it is interesting in name rather than quality.

The songs themselves aren’t too bad, several of them I really like but there are one or two real stinkers like Taliesin which is annoyingly repetitive and truly hateful, the opener isn’t too good either and the spoken intro to that song from Goethe’s writings just feels out of place opening this album. So it opens horribly but continues decently and hadn’t it been for it being so incoherent it may have been a fairly good album but as it lacks direction and feels unfinished, it isn’t a fairly good album. It isn’t bad either but I doubt that too many music fans will really take this album to heart, it has none of those traits that great albums have.

However, there are some really good songs here, the third track Last Warrior is very strong and anthemic and quite interesting. I also think the title track show the band at it’s best and that the track that ends the album, if you discount the bonus tracks, Harper in the Wind is very good but ends in an abrupt way which is a bit of a shame for a good song but also for the album to end in such a strange way. But the abrupt ending is the least of this album’s problems, the incoherence is really what destroys this album. I think the band should have spent more time finishing the album because my main gripe with it is that it feels unfinished. For Stormwitch’s comeback, unfortunately I think it feels pointless and I can’t really recommend it to anyone still alive.

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