The Beauty and the Beast

By 1987, Stormwitch's transition from speedy, NWOBHM-influenced heavy metal to something closer to Germany's more theatrical and suave power metal was in full effect. After gradually introducing elements of the new aesthetic on "Stronger than Heaven" and ending up with what felt like a hesitant album that couldn't quite decide where it was headed, they went the whole hog on follow-up LP "The Beauty and the Beast".

If first impressions count for something, let's just get it out of the way that this album starts off on the wrong foot in the worst manner. "Call of the Wicked" is potentially the worst song that Stormwitch had composed up to that point. Can you recall, gentle reader, an Iron Maiden song where the only chorus hook is one phrase repeated several times over and they manage to get away with it, because they're Iron fucking Maiden and can somehow make even that minimalist approach work? Well it doesn't work here at all. The mantra-like repetition of those four words becomes GRATING by the end of the song, I now just skip to the second track when listening to this album. The nicest thing that can be said about "Call of the Wicked" is that it mercifully doesn't even clock in at a full 3 minutes long.

The good news is that the one real stinker on here is already behind us, so that wasn't too hard. The rest of the album presents a somewhat eclectic blend of subject matter and stylistic approaches. "Just for One Night" literally sounds like it could've been an outtake from "Walls of Jericho" with Kai Hansen on vocals, Andy Aldrian sounding like him to an almost uncanny degree on this one. It even contains some zany Helloween sound effects towards the end. And as an added bonus to those who really pay attention, it's possibly the sequel to "White Flour" from the first Stormwitch album as both songs are about evil, accursed mills. "The Beauty and the Beast", title track for this album, fully embraces the "Romantic" part of "Dark/Black Romantic". It sports, for lack of a better term, a very "pretty" sound; complete with female backing vocals, this track does lean to the poppier side but not excessively so. Your mileage may vary on this one, but I really don't mind it (and would prefer to listen to it on repeat instead of listening to "Call of the Wicked" even once).

Pirates. Stormwitch were fond of them, in fact one of their first songs was "Skull and Crossbones". Hell, by this point they had even updated their "Baroque gentlemen" look by adding puffy shirts underneath their stylish overcoats. They couldn't exactly steal Running Wild's gimmick and sing about all pirates, all the time but they were still able to include two swashbuckling tunes on this album. "Emerald Eye" pushes the power metal aesthetic to the forefront with Michael Kiske-style operatic wails from Aldrian and an impressive guitar solo from Lee Tarot, whose technical prowess showed further signs of improvement on this release, all backed by an unabashed "Stranger in a Strange Land" bass line. "Tigers of the Sea" is all about the more fun and adventurous side of heavy and power metal, going out of its way to create a fitting atmosphere with its port tavern ambience and raspy buccaneer voices barking orders to the crew. These songs add some levity to the mix, a touch of Treasure Island among the usual Edgar Allan Poe and Bram Stoker.

The most impressive songs on the album are also the two longest ones. The decidedly heavier "Russia's on Fire" (about the Battle of Beresina during the Napoleonic Wars), with its chugging and ominous riff, paints an evocative portrait of how hopeless war must feel when General Winter is not on your side. Then there's the Native Indian themed epic "Cheyenne (Where the Eagles Retreat)", where the band again succeeds in forging the proper setting and atmosphere with their music, drummer Pete Lancer in particular deserving props. But I must make special mention of the album's resident ballad, "Tears by the Firelight". No, this isn't even a proper power ballad, no electric guitar. But it actually accomplishes what a ballad is supposed to, which is to move the listener and stir some sort of emotion within. Splendid and classy are the words that I would associate with it. These guys weren't dubbed "Masters of the Black Romantic" for nothing.

Stormwitch's stylistic change strikes me as somewhat similar to the one that HammerFall went through in 2002: parallels could be made between the albums "Stronger than Heaven" and "Crimson Thunder", in that both bands seemed to have trouble finding their footing as they transitioned from a fast-paced and energetic style towards one that was more theatrical and mid-tempo. Whereas on the follow-up albums, both bands felt much more comfortable in their new shoes and their output sounded a fair deal more consistent and convincing. On "The Beauty and the Beast", Stormwitch have settled into their new Helloween-influenced sound as well as their fancy image as Baroque dandies in pirate shirts, and they've actually made it work for themselves.

Standout tracks: Emerald Eye, Tears by the Firelight, Tigers of the Sea, Russia's on Fire, Cheyenne

This album sort of summarizes the problem I have with a lot of the europower genre as a whole - while this album is more rooted in heavy/glam metal with some power metal elements, it does have a lot in common with much of europower, stylistically. The foremost such similarity is the super, super terribly big flowery choruses which europower seems to employ more often than not. Sure, Stormwitch always made use of big, catchy choruses; hell, that's half their appeal, I know that. But they were never this goddamn, well...flowery. Take the very first song, "Call of the Wicked," for example. The riffs are alright, the verse is pretty decent, then the chorus comes in and makes me wish I hadn't eaten yet as I feel bile rising up in my throat. The delivery and musical style of the line "Call of the wicked! Whoa-oh!" as it's used here is more rooted in glam rock than in metal, undeniably. You get female vocals backing up the male vocals (not that that's bad in and of itself, but in the context it is), sung in a poppy, neutered style that, while slightly hinted at in 1986's Stronger than Heaven, was never come close to on that album. Sure, the songs and choruses there were catchy, but it was still more about catchy riffs than about poppy vocal lines; the vocal lines, even in the chorus, were always backing up the riffs, not the other way around. Here, the landscape has changed. What riffs there are are here more as support to these overly poppy, saccharine choruses.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the album is bad as a whole, nor that even every single song has a chorus like this; there are a couple of legitimately good songs here ("Just for One Night," "Tigers of the Sea," "Cheyenne"), but the glam influence isn't just in the choruses, either. Take "Emerald Eye"; that main riff is super simple, dumbed down to the point that it lacks any aggression or even interesting quality on its own, clearly built only as a simple repetitive background to the equally dumb vocal lines. This is evident as much in the verses as in the chorus in this song. "Call of the Wicked" and "Emerald Eye" are far from the floweriest the album gets, either. The utterly vomit-inducing title track may perhaps hold that title - my god, that chorus is sub-Kiske Helloween shit (to mention another flowery album from 1987). It's really quite strange that they named the album after what is quite easily the worst track they'd ever written up to that point, but so be it. That track, along with the aforementioned "Call of the Wicked" and "Emerald Eye" have the brunt of the glam influence here (it does creep in in other places, like the chorus of "Russia's on Fire"), but the album is still far from being great otherwise. "Russia's on Fire" and "Welcome to Bedlam" seem a bit rushed and sloppy, especially "Russia's on Fire," which contains a total of one fairly-good-but-not-great riff over 6 fucking minutes - the longest track on the album, and also the one which contains the least musical ideas. The chorus also feels like an afterthought, just "WHOA-OH" repeated, literally. "Welcome to Bedlam" is listenable, and even mildly enjoyable much of the time, but still has problems that, in my opinion, still puts it below any song from the first three albums. There's still a bit too much repetition here, the chorus is really boring (as well as slightly glammy/flowery), and the flow could be better in places. The main riff is really good, and the vocal lines in the verses are pretty good, but again the chorus is simply subpar; not as bad as the 3 glam tracks, but still not very good.

Finally, I'll briefly address the ballad, "Tears by the Firelight." It's a fairly decent track really - putting the number of tracks I like here at 4, and a 5th that's not bad; only half the album is truly bad, in other words, but I think that the inclusion of this ballad, despite it being decent, truly pinpoints the problems I have with the album, and especially the direction it was taking the band towards. The first 3 albums had not a single ballad anywhere; not one over the course of 26 tracks (not including the intro on Stronger than Heaven). The band wanted to include one here, and the title track is so flowery and limp as to come close to one as well. It shows that the band was becoming less interesting in being metal and more interested in "beauty," as they saw it, I suppose. Never again would they return to writing decent riffs after this album; while I don't really like Beauty and the Beast as a whole, I could accept it if it was merely a misstep for the band; in that capacity, it would be understandable. The thing that really fills me with vitriol, though, is that this album seems to have, either symbolically or actually, ruined the band. This is much a parallel to the Helloween album I mention in the title of the review; while I personally wasn't even a huge fan of Walls of Jericho, the followup Keeper of the Seven Keys Part I completely departed from the style, yet still had some decent songs and good musical ideas scattered throughout, and was by far the best album the band would ever release again. This album, to me, represents a piece of the fall in power metal from aggression to fully embracing the flowery, the riffless. It is not awful, and there are a few tracks worth keeping among your Stormwitch collection, but it is a sad, sad album to me, and I'll never really be able to like it overall in any capacity. Stormwitch are done here.

Commercial is a weird word when it comes to heavy metal. In general terms, it means a band dumbs-down its music and starts singing about how much they’re gonna “rock ya” or how many pairs of tits they can get in their sleek Lamborghini. With The Beauty and the Beast this is not really the case. Sure, this is a slicker and more accessible album than its predecessors, but that seems to be a logical progression as Tales of Terror was more polished than the debut and Stronger than Heaven is certainly not a particularly gritty affair. Indeed, describing this album as simply ‘more commercial’ doesn’t really do it justice at all. Most, if not all, of the successful elements from Stronger than Heaven are still here it’s just that the gothic horror aspects are just a little bit sweeter. In fact, most of the songs on this album certainly wouldn’t have sounded at all out of place on its predecessor, so it’s pretty safe to say that if you liked Stronger… you’ll find a lot to like about this one, too (albeit the first two tracks might take some getting used to).

Stormwitch have definitely branched out a little bit here, but they’ve still got that Hammer Horror charm to them. Take ‘Just For One Night’ for instance, which just really shows how true to their Hammer Horror metal roots the band are. ‘Just For One Night’ sounds like typical Dokken fodder about a “love ‘em and leave ‘em” one night stand – wherein our hunky protagonist would satisfy a young maiden’s every desire leaving her with a longing for more and a strange rash in-betwixt her legs – but in actuality it’s a typical ghost story. Again, it’s pure Hammer Horror! Just remember whenever Peter Cushing or whoever would arrive at a strange tavern in an isolated village in Hungary or Austria (no doubt one where its female population was suitably chesty) and express his desire to stay at a haunted castle and the whole tavern would suddenly become silent upon hearing this stranger’s unusual request. It’s pretty much got that vibe. A daring man arrives at a strange town and seeks out to gain his fortune or to learn fear at the hands of some ghostly apparition who is haunting the abandoned mill. Musically, it’s rousing fun; simplistic riffing, blazing solos and a big catchy chorus; 1980s metal fun that always makes me smile.

Similarly, Stormwitch don’t quite seem content to follow the “commercial formula” with the album’s ballad. Simply because ‘Tears by Firelight’ doesn’t ever feel the need to assert its metalness. It’s content simply with being a ballad and doesn’t need to give us a big clichéd loud part complete with guitar heroics. And for this reason it’s a lot more successful than a lot of other metal ballads which often don’t seem content to exist as soft songs and have to put in a big climatic moment, which can sometimes ruin the previously established atmosphere. Obviously, lyrically, this matches the song perfectly as any big chest-beating heroics wouldn’t suit the song’s tale of one woman’s loss and grief. It seems that Stormwitch don’t cheapen their songs with unnecessary add-ons and that they always valued the overall story of their songs.

Moreover despite being a bit sleeker in sound this time around; the album’s actually got more of an epic quality than any other 1980s Stormwitch album. Whereas on previous albums, perhaps only ‘Jonathan’s Diary’ and ‘The Sword of Saigon’ hinted at epic qualities – indeed it seems that ‘Jonathan’s Diary’, for instance, is simply a longer song because it has more narrative material to fit in. This time around, however, there’s ‘Russia’s On Fire’ which actually seems like a precursor to Running Wild’s ‘The Battle of Waterloo’. It’s a grim tale of the Napoleonic wars; frozen fields and countless deaths. Perhaps we could take it as a counterpart to ‘Tears by Firelight’ – with this being the male perspective of the horrors of war from a doomed soldier, while his wife waits at home with no news of her beloved at the front (I'm sure the band didn't mean it like this as 'Tears by Firelight' ends with the victory being claimed, whereas the French campaign in Russia was, er, less than successful, but still it's a nice way to interpret the songs).

Strengthening the similarities Stormwitch have to Running Wild – at least in terms of lyrical themes, as musically, the two aren’t so similar in sound – is the fact that there’s a pirate-themed track here. One could accuse Stormwitch of following RW’s footsteps but it’s certainly worth noting that Stormwitch were singing about pirates in 1984! Moreover, ‘Cheyenne (Where the Eagles Retreat)’ is rather close to ‘Uaschitschun’ from 1988’s Port Royal. So, if anything, it’s likely that Rolf was inspired by Stormwitch and not vice versa (although, it’s highly probable that both bands were listening to each other). ‘Tigers of the Sea’, however, is a fun little number. Perhaps it’s a little more cartoonish than Running Wild’s pirate-themed numbers, but still a lot of fun. The album’s closer, however, ‘Welcome to Bedlam’ is one of my favourites here. I always appreciate tales of mental illness in metal and this is quite an excellent number with Mück really getting into character, cawing and cackling like a madman on certain lines. It’s one of the faster numbers on the album and it’s always nice to close on a bang like this.

In fact, I really must applaud Stormwitch’s development here; they’re never overstretched or uncomfortable sounding but rather building on previously established ground. Andy Mück still sounds like a rakish, anaemic aristocrat – feverish from opiates and an excess of wine – obsessed by his own morbid thoughts and the fact that the witches conspire against him in the countryside and that there’s a strange groaning sound coming from the family vault. Although The Beauty and the Beast is not as classic as Walpurgis Night or Stronger than Heaven, which I would suggest for newcomers to the band, it’s still a mandatory listen for fans of this underappreciated band.