WitcheR takes on Classical Music’s sacred monsters.
Led since 2010 by Roland Nebauer (vocals/guitar/drums, Frozen Wreath, Vrag) and Karola Gere (keyboards, ex-Trollheimen), the band unveils Boszorkányszimfóniák, their new EP, after three albums.
Listening to WitcheR‘s music, it quickly becomes clear that the band is as influenced by Black Metal as it is by the great symphonies of Classical Music. So I wasn’t surprised to find that all seven tracks on the album were covers of anthems that are well known, by sound or name, and that are among the major works of their style or era.
Although only keyboards are present on Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky‘s majestic Hymn of the Cherubim – Op- 41, No- 6-, the track perfectly fits the duo’s universe, who will nevertheless return to their Black Metal influences with Georg Friedrich Händel‘s Sarabande – Suite No. 4 in D Minor, HWV 437, adding drums to accompany the composition, as well as a misty, icy saturation, which gives it a completely different allure. Melancholy envelops us with the keyboards of Åses død (The Death of Ase) – Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Op. 46, No. 2. by Edvard Grieg, where impressive sonorities take pride of place, then it’s back into darkness that the musicians reshape Frédéric Chopin‘s Spring Waltz (Mariage d’Amour), creating an as surprising as interesting contrast. Whether double kick sublimates the airy harmonics, it disappears again to let Ralph Vaughan Williams‘ Three Shakespeare Songs: The Cloud-Capp’d Towers – No. 2 bewitch us with its luminous soothing veil, before Carl Orff‘s epic Carmina Burana: Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi – 1. O Fortuna takes on a Black Metal tinge that suits it perfectly and gives it a dantesque scope.
The EP closes with Summernight Melancholy, an instrumental piano composition that begins in a thunderstorm, and eventually welcomes a few strings to accompany it on its wandering journey.
WitcheR‘s music has always been tinged with Classical influences, but this EP brings them straight to the fore. Boszorkányszimfóniák is a more than successful tribute to the sacred monsters it covers.
85/100