Thrash, France, 1986. Normally those three words would tell you everything that you need to know, as there’s not much more to Witches. You get what you expect…. And thoroughly derserve. It would be disrespectful to leave it at that though, because The Fates is an amazing old school metal album and fans of old teutonic thrash (you know, the big three – Kreator, Sodom and Destruction) will salivate over it from the first post-apocalyptic riffs onward.

Eighty six is the year this band began and musically they stay true to their roots. The gutteral vocals of Sibylle Colin-Tocquaine, add a whole other level of evil to their otherwise very bouncy and extremely fast thrash. Does anyone remember Pestilence\’s first album? Vocally things sound very similar to that, not that that’s a bad thing, right? It does sound a bit dated occassionally, but doesn’t everything, and everyone from the eighties? It’s time we all took a trip back to the beginning with Witches…. Martijn Welzen