Review: Witchcraft ‘IDAG’

Swedish doom veterans, Witchcraft, return with their seventh album, IDAG. Released on Heavy Psych Sounds, it’s the sum of all those parts and more.

Highlights include the title track and opener, Idag, a heavy, Sabbathian behemoth with an eight-minute running time. Drömmen Om Död Och Förruttnelse is similarly dark and bruising, its unsettling vocal set over some riff-laden guitar grooves.

Ninth track, Spirit, is a personal favourite of mine. It kicks in with some ear-splitting distorted guitar before slowing right down, Magnus Pelander’s chilling lyric delivery is as melodic as it is brutal.

But it wouldn’t be a Witchcraft album without some chameleon behaviour. This has never been a band to rest on their laurels or follow what everyone else around them is doing. While their self-titled debut was fairly classic doom, Pelander, the band’s main songwriter, vocalist, guitarist and only remaining original member, has been moving Witchcraft’s sound in an increasingly progressive direction – mostly for the better.

2012’s Legend was not to my own taste personally, its modern production and contemporary rock vibes falling a little flat for me at times. But the drive to do something different is to be applauded in a scene which sometimes can sound very much stuck in a certain time and place. IDAG continues this trend.

Magnus Pelander’s chilling lyric delivery is as melodic as it is brutal…

Gläntan (Längtan) sees the album take a sharp left turn with an almost acapella vocal, before Burning Cross, the first track in English, throws some psych rock and blues into the mix with its indulgent use of wah pedal and a vocal delivery which, to me, seems pitched somewhere between Chris Cornell and Jimi Hendrix.

Christmas, a wholly acoustic number, has echoes of 2020’s curiously titled Black Metal album, an entirely acoustic outing by Pelander, while the outro, Om Du Vill (Slight Return) is again very minimalist with its brief wailing vocal stacked over some bluesy steel guitar.

With a name like Witchcraft, you think you know what you’re getting with this band – and you’re wrong. In fact, you have probably been wrong for the best part of twenty years as Pelander changes direction with just about every album he’s released. And that’s not a bad thing at all. ‘This album will reap souls and destroy wicked minds,’ he is quoted as saying of IDAG. Consider me a convert.

Label: Heavy Psych Sounds
Band Links: Facebook | Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram

Scribed by: Dharma