Burning Witches are a Swiss Heavy/Power Metal band, founded in 2015 by rhythm guitarist Romana Kalkuhl. She was soon joined by Romana on rhythm guitarist, bassist Jeanine Grob, drummer Lala Frischknecht, singer Laura Guldemond and guitarist Courtney Cox.
Ushering in a new wave of Heavy Metal – Burning Witches soon developed a steady fan base and started to deliver some awe-inspiring albums. With just a sip of their bewitched brew of Heavy Metal, the quintet whisks the listener back to the heyday of the hottest and cruelest era in Rock history. Inspired by the trademarks of classic 80’s Heavy Metal – think skyscraping guitar solos, bludgeoning, raspy vocals and screams, and fast paced drums –
Now Burning Witches are set to unleash their power down under and I had the chance to sit down with Jeanine Grob to find out a little more about the tour.
“I am so happy about this, well actually I have to say the whole band is happy about this tour because we have never been in Australia before,” she says with the excitement showing through her thick accent. “I have always wanted to visit there and now I can come with the band and that is amazing. I just hope that we have time to look around the country and learn a little bit about the culture.”
“One of the things I love about touring is that the food in every country is different,” she explains. “I am also very excited about being able to see and meet the fans. We are all very excited about the shows that we get to do there.”
That leads me to ask where the life-long dream of visiting Australian came from.
“I’ve always seen pictures of how nice the country is,” she answers. “My friends went there for vacation and I saw all these pictures of animals – the koala bears, the kangaroos – and then I heard all about the food. But I love animals and wildlife – when I was a child we had dogs, we had cats, we had guinea pigs. So, I really love animals and I just know that is going to be something nice to see in Australia.”
As we turn our attention back to the music of Burning Witches I ask Jeanine if she realizes how popular the band have become in Australia over recent years.
“I don’t think we do to be honest,” she says. “I know that we have some fans and I think that is the reason why we have been given the opportunity to tour Australia but I really don’t know how many we have. But I have to say I really can’t wait to be able to meet them all. We are going to give them five crazy girls, in a good way, who love heavy metal and have a love and passion for the music. They can expect that we always love to go down into the crowds after the show and have beers with them. They should expect a lot of positivity.”
Most audiences and journalists who have witnessed the recent Burning Witches shows in Europe and South America have said that this is a band that is at the top of their game when it comes playing live and Jeanine says that has come from a lot of hard work.
“We have been rehearsing a lot,” she says. “Sometimes we do that as a whole band and other times we work hard by ourselves at home. I think things have also got a lot better because now we have been playing so long together that we are much closer to each other and that means we have a lot of fun together on stage and I think that makes everything in the show better. We are also all friends outside the band, we are all close together and I think you can see that on the stage.”
The discussion soon turns to the bands we grew up listening to and that leads me to ask Jeanine does she remember the time that she first fell in love with heavy music.
“Yeah, my Dad used to listen to rock and roll and a little bit of metal,” she explains. “But when I was about 16 I had a school friend and he had his own heavy metal band so I started going to his shows and I just fell in love with metal. Then I started to meet new people and I went with them to other metal shows and I fell in live with the power of the music.”
“When I was a kid I also played flute and clarinet,” she continues. “Then when I met Romana I started to play bass and that was 12 years ago. We met because she was my guitar teacher and after a while she gave me a bass and asked me how I felt about it. And to be really honest it felt really good so I started to play bass and then she formed Burning Witches and she asked me to join and that is how it all came about. When I was young I never thought I would play in a heavy metal band but when I went to those shows I would stand in front of the stage and think how cool it would be to be on the stage but I never thought it would happen. I got into that situation because of Romana though.”
To finish off I asked her what exactly they have prepared for Australia… especially when it comes to the set list.
“Wow we are actually ten years old now as a band,” she says laughing. “And we have five albums behind us and now we have that opportunity to take a few songs from each album and mix them all together. It’s not like in the beginning when we had only one album of songs to chose from. When it comes to choosing we try to pick not only the best songs but also the songs that our fans love. We want to give everybody a taste of the songs and we hope that everybody is happy at the end.”
Burning Witches are currently on tour in Australia.
