Live Review: Burning Witches - Academy 3, Manchester
25th January 2026
Words: Dan Barnes
Photos: Tim Finch
The third stop of a brief three-show visit to English shores finds the Witches and Kings tour spending their Sunday evening on the top floor of Manchester’s Academy complex, the former Hop and Grape, now, simply Academy 3.
It feels like more of a co-headliner than the usual main band and support, with German power metal horde Hammer King taking the stage first for an hour of rousing, over-blow Teutonic tunes. There are a few delays, causing me to miss the first couple of songs, and they’re well into Make Metal Royal Again as I take my place. It’s everything good about the genre, all rolled into a single package: chest-beating, fist-pumping anthems, packed full of positive vibes and a bombastic delivery.
Kingdom of Hammers and Kings comes as conformation that Manchester has been successfully incorporated into the band’s own Kingdom, for which we are showered with gold covered in blood. Vocalist Patrick Fuchs uses the opportunity to wave his big hammer in the faces of the front row, as the guitarists pull of their best modern-Maiden licks. There’s a shout-out to the inclusivity of the Metal community before, ironically, Kingdemonium’s Pariah Is my Name, which sticks closely to Hammer King’s tried and tested formula, including some synchronised guitar swinging.
König und Kaiser ups the theatrical ante, introducing the character Major Domus, the only human able to handle Patrick’s hammer in public – stop sniggering at the back- who leads the audience through a series of chants. That character’s titular song finds the band in a more beefed-up mode, bringing in dirty chugs and a fierceness that strays, but not too far, from the Power Metal model.
Hammerschlag borrows from Helloween’s speed metal approach; the latest single, a cover of Kenny Loggins’ Danger Zone from the non-more Eighties Top Gun soundtrack is a hoot, and the pure metal frenzy of Hoheitsgebiet has Manchester eating out of the palm of Hammer King’s hands. The band finish their set with two songs from opposing ends of their career: Kingdom of the Hammer King comes from the 2015 debut, while The Last Kingdom brings us up to date with music from last year’s Make Metal Royal Again record.
In the end the German’s played it perfectly, self-deprecating humour and some monstrous metal riffs, taking us back, musically to the Eighties, and historically to the medieval era, where if the plague didn’t get you, the cold would.
Swiss five-piece, Burning Witches, make their first return to Manchester since 2023, when they opened for KK’s Priest and Paul Di’Anno over at the Ritz. Priest’s Touch of Evil acts as the intro, turning into thunderstorms and decidedly inclement weather, before launching into Soul Eater. Theirs’ is a less bombastic take on Heavy Metal then Hammer King’s, sticking close to the template of Judas Priest and early Iron Maiden, with a liberal sprinkling of all kinds of NWoBHM bands for good measure.
Shame stomps with a harder edge, vocalist Laura Guldemond dons devil horns for Dance with the Devil, which finds guitarists Romana Kalkuhl and Courtney Cox – no, not the one from Friends – trading licks in the best Downing/ Tipton manner. Unsurprisingly, Maiden of Steel is a rumbling, fist-pumping Iron Maiden-inspired ditty, and there’s even some proto-Thrash to be heard on The Dark Tower.
Laura doesn’t interact with the crowd as much as Patrick did – possibly down to a natural, instinctive Swiss neutrality; instead, she lets the music do the talking, through a down and dirty version of Sea of Lies and the title track of the band’s recent Inquisition record. If I’m not mistaken, I’m hearing a distinctly Queensrÿche underscore here, and elsewhere. In the best Eighties Metal album tradition, Burning Witches have included the ballad Release Me, which gets the Academy’s arms waving in unison, as the on-stage cooling fans blow band hair around like it’s 1987 and a Whitesnake video. Black Widow lands like Ozzy’s Bark at the Moon.
Burning Witches have a history dating back a decade, across six studio albums, all of which get visited tonight. Evil Witch is lifted from The Dark Tower, Lucid Nightmares and Wings of Steel from 2020’s Dance with the Devil, while set-closer is The Witch of the North titular tune. Leaving only the single encore of the obligatory Burning Witches to bring the curtain down on what has been a fun way to spend a Sunday evening in January. The Academy was healthily attended, showing there is still a hunger for this, regardless of how misunderstood and maligned the genre is by the mainstream.
Photo Credits: Tim Finch Photography
