The German heavy metal legend Stormwitch is back, eight years after they split up, with a new album called Dance With The Witches and right from the very first seconds of the album it becomes clear that the band is still stuck in the eighties heavy metal scene. One of the few modern sounding songs is paradoxically enough the title track, which sounds like a very straightforward German power metal song.

I am sure that this album will satisfy the diehard Stormwitch fans who have been waiting eight agonizing years for Dance With The Witches but I am afraid that this album won’t attract many new fans. Every single song sounds excruciatingly repetitive and suffers from utter lack of inspiration and conviction with the best examples being the seventh song “The House Of Usher” and the eighth song “The King Of Terrors” which are both the true epitome of boredom. The chorus gets repeated so many times that after hearing each and every song once, you can sing the chorus along without any problems. This might of course be done intentionally, but it gets old really fast and after playing this album a few times the straightforwardness of it all almost starts to dull your brain.

Furthermore most of the guitar riffs sound so familiar that I would swear I have heard them before and the beginning of the sixth song, “Nothing More”, sounds like a straight improvisation of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway To Heaven”. The whole album is just too predictable. It is this predictability however, that probably has attracted so many people to this band in the past. However these days, when bands like Led Zeppelin, Rainbow and Deep Purple are, slowly but steadily, slipping into forgetfulness, I doubt Stormwitch will have the same impact as eight years ago and they have certainly failed to impress me. Sure, there are some okay ideas and songs on this album, like the first song, “Men Of Miracles” and the medieval beginning of the fifth song “The Devil’s Bride” but it is all half-hearted and not nearly enough to be even remotely interesting.