Traditional metal with a few nice touches.
First up: the name. Encountering a CD by a band named Seven Witches, with such an oh-so-spikey logo, I foolishly thought I was about to hear some sort of Pagan black metal. In reality, the album title - 'Amped' - is a far more effective indicator of the nature of this band. Conjuring up images of towering stacks of Marshall amplifiers with the volume turned up to 11, it's an appropriate title for a CD chock full of old-fashioned heavy/thrash metal - but one which also goes beyond the genres' conventions.
Kicking off with some thrashy, riff-based metal reminiscent of early Metallica, "Amped" starts off with heavy-metal-by-numbers, before expanding into more varied, and exciting music after the first couple of tracks. There's even a power ballad - the chest-beating 'BE', which sounds like Anthrax covering Aerosmith and managing to - mostly - pull it off successfully. Particularly pleasant is the extended guitar/keyboard section which begins around the three minute mark.
One aspect of this album which particularly warrants a mention is the diverse lyrical content. The press release is keen to mention the more political songs - such as 'Fame Gets You Off',a fairly unexciting rant against "the legal circus of American trials involving famous people" that gets very repetitive towards the end. But the lyrical themes here are much more varied. "Sunnydale High" is, as you might expect, a song themed around the TV programme "Buffy The Vampire Slayer", while 'GP Fix' is a drum-driven track track with the lyric "get my moto GP fix". Seemingly unironically, too...
The skilled axe-work, and the occasional, effective use of piano parts on this album make it pleasingly melodic, yet also heavy enought to satisfy most metalheads. The sleazy guitar riffs of 'Flesh for Fantasy' are tow-tappingly good, and also well-suited to the song's seedy lyrical (sample line: "you'll see and feel my sex attack") content. In many ways, this song sums up the Seven Witches sound very well - big, dumb heavy metal of the mullets-and-spandex variety. Yet with it's varied vocal styles, and subtle synth flourishes, it's also a great deal more than just another album for those who wish the 80s had never ended. If you're after something enjoyable and varied-ish, but never terrifyingly new or inventive, then you might well want to give Seven Witches a go.