Interviews

Burning Witches Interview

Hello! Here is Zsuzsanna Muszka from Kronos Mortus metal e’zine!

Hi! How are you?

I’m fine, thank you! And how are you today?

Yeah, the weekend is nice!

What’s about the weather in Switzerland? Is it quite cold there now, isn’t it?

Yeah, but it’s funny because it’s supposed to be actually pretty cold today, but the sun is shining and there’s no wind. So it’s actually really nice.

That’s good! Right from the start, let’s say you haven’t been a member of Burning Witches for a long time. Despite the successes and popularity, your predecessor Seraina decided to switch. How big was the task to take your positition as the frontlady of the band?

I think within 3 weeks I was with them on my first gig. So yeah, I was going to audition, learned trashy songs, I started to write new song and I still had to work between, you know, so it was like a really busy period. Well, I didn’t have a social life (laughs), it was just learning the songs for almost 24 hours a day. I mean, some people are very natural learning lyrics, but I have to put in a lot of effort, you know. (laughs) It was totally fine, I just listened to the songs a lot, I tried to get my voice back on the level that it needed to be, because there’s a lot of variety how the vocals are being used. And that moment they contacted me. I was actually just partying a lot and having fun, there was nothing really… there was no gigs that I practiced for, you know. So, for me it was like „Ok., let’s get back of the work, right now!” (laughs) And started to live very healthy again and practicing a lot. And in three weeks, my voice worked again, so I was very happy about that. Yeah, I was sure I could do it but I was just a little bit worried that if three weeks work would be enough be that were! (laughs) So it was lot of hard work but it was worthed for the effort, totally.

It’s good to hear, indeed! You carry on the ancient power of the Heavy Metal style, which was loved back in the 80’s by the metalheads! In your opinion, what are the main values of Burning Witches’ music?

Of course, it has to be the eighties, that the first. (laughs) The second one: we do like to empower the women, you know. So it’s nice to have the strength and, yeah… I think the nice thing of this age is, in the western world at least that no one was really forced into marriage or stuff like that. You just can be around the person you should be able to do, you know. But yeah, still everyone was used to this culture or something that is really good actually at the moment. But there’s still a few people with little bit of closed minds, you know. But I think it’s actually really good. And it’s nice to be able to do this and, you know, the further develops this process, I think that’s also a really cool thing. So, it’s Burning Witches, we’re all girls and it’s really heavy metal, all right? (laughs) We’re just like to, I especially maybe, because I write the lyrics and I just really love the fantasy theme and the burning witches theme. You know, in the lyrics, you can find, of course, witchces themes and a little bit of crazy stuff. The really matter you get the fantasy stuff you would expect for it, within the theme ’withces’. I love that. I’m really, totally into, for example, The Witcher, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, you know, so.

What would you say about the Dance with the Devil album due to release in March? How do you feel about it, in comparison to the previous albums?

How do we compare it to previous ones? Oh, I think it is the most diverse album until now, so whatever you an imagine is probably in there, you know and that’s cool. It sounds like one album but it’s so diverse. I think until now this is probably the album you got so many different songs on. Every song you hear is like „Oh, this is another surprise!”, it’s just the coolest thing that we have now. That’s what makes it a little bit different because for the rest, of course, we have the witches theme and also the eighties themes. It still sounds like Burning Withces, you know. So it’s still the same, but a little bit more diverse. So I think that’s cool. I think we will surprise people with that a bit.

Otherwise, how much attention did you give to the band before you entered? How did you get in contact with them?

I didn’t know them. I noticed Black Widow, I really loved that song, it’s so energetic. The whole song grabbed me totally, from the beginning to the end. I loved that song. So I was very-very happy they contacted me and I knew that Seraina was in there, so I followed in a little bit, you know, via Seraina. I thought that was very cool, they were doing really-really cool things that seemed to be doing good. And when they contacted me, I was like „Seriously?! Shit, I don’t wanna mess this up!” (laughs)

Turning back for a little more on the new work. I would like to ask you about the album writing and recording process. How long it had been taken and what were the main milestones in it?

Actually, I think we did the most writing in six weeks and after that it was just a little bit of getting the songs finished, you know. So if there was someting in the way I did not wanted it to be or they didn’t really like it, we tried to work on that in the last two weeks. So I think in eight weeks or maybe a little bit more we went to the studio two times. At the most not more than twelve weeks. I think between eight and twelve weeks the whole process finished. We just wrote and recorded everything. And that’s really cool, because, you know, if you write so many songs in a short amount of time, because I tried to write two songs a week, you get into a flow, you know. You were everything just goes easier and easier. So, in the beginning, for me, normally, because I don’t write a lot of songs. But in the beginning, you are like the first two songs, it was okay for me, because I was like, „Oh, I totally know, what I wanted to do with these songs”, you know. And then, there were more difficult songs, but because I already got into the writing flow, it was way easier for me, when I started with those more difficult songs. It just happened really naturally for me. It was two songs a week a bit much, but it still has the ride, because I was just having inspiration. Except for a few songs which were a bit more difficult and Schmier helped us with them in the studio. I talked to them about this and they said, „If you really can’t finish it, it’s okay, we will do this in the studio together.” And it really, really, really worked out fine. It actually surprised me how well we could finish those songs, how cool they are now, you know. So we are really happy with the whole process.

The single has a classy song, plus live recordings. What reactions you heard about, what what did the fans say to your music, your vocals?

Actually, in general, I think, you know, there are two opinions. One is: „Oh, I still like Seraina’s voice better” and I can imagine it, because, for example, from Nightwish I still prefer Tarja, although it was already years ago. So it’s just their opinion. You can’t change that, it’s okay. But I’m really happy that most people actually really like it. (laughs) And I’m really happy about the new songs that we already released, because in general ninety-five percent of the comments are super positive. So, yeah, I’m really happy!

That’s good to hear! In the band, you all have your unique and cool style (I mean hair, clothes an so on). How important is looking good in metal music?

It’s just, you know… The music is the most important, always, you know. If you have some very good music, it doesn’t really matter, but with the style we make, people just expect you to look a certain way. So, in that aspect, it’s very important because people are all recognize which genre you are playing in. And if they can’t do this, they will be confused. It’s simple as that, you know. You have to look like you have to making your music because if you don’t, people are not sure. It’s just as simple as that. It’s just with everything, you know. I can see it with other things’ design. You probably know the Senseo. I mean, in Holland, it’s very popular to use this coffee machine. In the Netherlands they did a lot of market thing, a crazy amount of market thing for the people to be able to understand it. Because it was a coffee machine you could use with coffee pads. You know, those small, round, paper things filled with coffee. So you just put in the machine and you can close it and then you have to fill the machine with the water, close that, too. And then you’ll have your cup of coffee, with just this one pad. So you don’t have to loose substrate of the coffee. So, for example for old people who have shaky hands or whatever, it’s perfect. So, lot of kids bought it for their parents of stuff like that. They marketed it very well. But if they wouldn’t have done that, noone would have bought it. It’s as simple as that, you know. You just have to look the way that people expect you to look. That’s very important. That’s actually important. And then, for me, it’s actually also fun. I love it because I love design, because I did have studied it. I love to be creative. We all buy some basic clothes and then costumize it for ourselves so we make our own costumized clothes that’s fine to the stage and we had a little bit fun with that, you know! So I think it has also just a lot of fun to look nice. It’s a bit girly, you know, you like still look nice, dress up… It’s just fun, too. But it’s also really needed, I think.

After the album release in March, you’ll hit the road with the new disc. What are your expectations about the upcoming tour?

Well, I expect to have a lot of fun with all the people coming there. So we wanna really enjoy the shows with the people, just have a little bit, you know, energetic show and show them, of course, the new songs but also the favourites of the old songs. And yeah, I want people to go home and feel relaxed and energized and totally happy. And then I’m happy too, you know. So that’s what we are expecting. Actually, it’s really nice that we are going to the UK because a lot of people messaged us with „Oh, you haven’t been to the UK for a while. Please, come!” And then we found this tour with Korpiklaani when we can share the bus with them and they’re really cool guys. So, we’re really happy we’re going to the UK with Korpiklaani. And after that we have the UK tour, this is with Ross the Boss, and of course he is one of the founders of Manowar, so that’s really-really cool because it’s one of our main influences. It’s so cool that he wanted to come to play solo in a Manowar song that we covered. So he will play the solo and we will go and throw with him, you know. So we really hope we have to ask this because it’s not sure yet, but we really hope he wants to play this song live with us. And yeah, it’d be so cool that he did it. We’d really happy with that, yeah.

Would you like to share something about yourself that is not necessarily related to music and could be interesting?

I don’t really know how much mot related you wanted to be but I’m vocal coaching. If you’re a vocalist and you say „Hey, I wanna learn this or this”, actually I could help you with all kind of vocals as possible. So don’t hesitate to contact me. I think it’s really a lot of fun to help people. We can do it on skype, we can do it on tour. And, you know, just a crazy fact about me: lately, I have really been into geckos. Now already I have four leopard geckos and I’ll be breeding it and will have a lot of leopard geckos! It’s like for me and I’m like now obsessed, you know, so „Do me your favor, show me your leopard geckos!”

Do you want to share any message with the fans?

You’re from Hungary, right? I’m afraid one of the closest venue to your country will be actually in Milan, Italy. But don’t you know, what? Just talk a lot to your local clubs and tell them that they needed Burning Witches in their lives, you know. So we can go to Hungary. I think that’s the best because there will be no closer for you. Playing in Hungary would be cool!

That would be cool, indeed! Laura, thank you for your time and the nice chatting! All the best for you and for the whole band!

For you, too! Have a nice weekend! Thank you very much! Bye-bye!

Bye!

WEB: https://www.facebook.com/burningwitches666/

The interview was taken with Laura Guldemond on 26.01.2020.

Contributed by: Zsuzsanna Muszka

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