While Inquisition marks Burning Witches’ first full-length release with social media shredder and onetime Iron Maidens member Courtney Cox in the lineup, the Swiss unit actually welcomed the guitarist into their heavy metal sisterhood long, long ago.
Cox recalls first running into Burning Witches’ founding rhythm guitarist Romana Kalkuhl when the two acts crossed paths at an Austrian venue after the Witches issued their self-titled debut album in 2017. They got along famously backstage, which led to Cox being invited into the coven for a hellfire-blazing guest solo on the aptly titled Maiden of Steel from Burning Witches’ 2018 album, Hexenhammer.
Shortly after Burning Witches issued 2023’s The Dark Tower, then-lead guitarist Larissa Ernst decided to come off the road to prepare for motherhood. It was only natural for Kalkuhl to call up Cox and ask if she’d be up for filling in on some live dates. The partnership quickly snowballed into a full-time tenure.
For Cox, who also left the Iron Maidens in 2023, joining Burning Witches for Inquisition was an opportunity to present her shred-forward tendencies in a new and – more importantly – original light.
“I spent 14 years in the Iron Maidens. It was a great time, and I loved every second of it, but I didn’t start playing guitar to be a professional tribute musician,” says Cox about her career pivot.
“It was a great run, but it was lacking that creativity for me. Having the chance to express myself and my ideas, being able to be me and not, you know, Adrian Smith… it means the world to me to finally show what I can do, along with my sisters in the band.”
Last year, the quintet – rounded out by vocalist Laura Guldemond, bassist Jeanine Grob and drummer Lala Frischknecht – delivered the anthemically dark-swung The Spell of the Skull, a track where Kalkuhl and new co-conspirator Cox bulk up the beds with castle-leveling chord chunking and epic guitar-monies. Then Cox torches herself toward a series of blistering runs and trem-bar-quaking accents.
As an avid Instagram poster, the guitarist recently let fans peek behind the veil to see how she gets her skull going some days – by ripping the Spell solo on her signature Caparison Horus-M3 CC as she brews her morning coffee.
“Sometimes I should tone it down with the shredding, especially now, as I’m playing my own leads,” she says when asked about her caffeinated warmups. “I’m kind of a perfectionist. Before a show I’ll sit at home and make sure my hands and fingers are loose so I can go out and kill it – because there’s nothing worse than messing up your own stuff.”
Cox’s playing across Inquisition is intense and exquisite. Though the record features outliers like the spaciously power-chorded but supremely fist-pumping and Dio-esque High Priestess of the Night, Cox also courses through the mix like a demon possessed on mercury-dripping cuts like Burn in Hell or Mirror, Mirror – the latter concluding with a monumental harmonized tap outro.
“It was definitely my Reb Beach influence coming out,” Cox says, “because he would always do those weird tapping things, especially with his live solos. You know, the good old ’80s thing of ‘I’m gonna solo for three minutes while the rest of the band grabs a water.’
It was definitely my Reb Beach influence coming out... I came out to the studio and was tapping for two minutes straight
Courtney Cox
“Romana came up with these cool chord hits at the end of Mirror, Mirror, and I was like, ‘I have to do something cool here, and it has to be an epic fade-out.’ I came out to the studio and was tapping for two minutes straight, and then they put the fade on it – so, you know, you get a break. I love the finished recording. It’s a really great song.’”
For principal songwriter and band founder Kalkuhl, Burning Witches’ latest finds her generally focused on suitably maleficent riffage, but she also rips leads when she needs to, sometimes at the coaxing of Cox.
“I don’t really like to play solos, and I’m really happy that Courtney takes those parts,” Kalkuhl says, despite also incorporating furious lead trills into the title track and bluesier motifs across other parts of the album.
“I learned guitar playing rhythms with many bands, and covers too. For me, it’s really important that the picking hand sounds good when you’re changing parts with the fretting hand.”
When it came to the gear they handled across the album, Kalkuhl and Cox tended to stick to their stage setups. For Kalkuhl, that meant plugging her Jackson Soloist into a Peavey Triple XXX. Cox runs her “Greenie” Caparison into a Friedman amp, with Boss chorus and delay pedals glazing her lead tone.
The two players’ styles mesh seamlessly across the incendiary Inquisition, and while it might be the first release from Burning Witches’ new guitar tandem, the intrinsic bond they’ve already forged suggests the sisterhood is set for life.
“When I started this band, it was important for it to be like a family,” Kalkuhl says of the personal dynamic. “With Courtney, we feel that she’s like a sister.”
- Inquisition is out now via Napalm.
- This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.
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