SORCERESS

Opeth

Tech/Extreme Prog Metal

3.70 | 627 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

Sorceress might be Opeth's most safe and generic album. Saying that it's terrible would feel like a lie, but is it good? Not really.

Heritage was a pretty divisive album in the Opeth fanbase, it was a very rough change in musical direction. But thankfully, Pale Communion came out and proved that Opeth was capable of making high quality progressive rock. When Sorceress' first single came out (its title-track) I actually became very interested in the album, it sounded much heavier but it still kept factors from Heritage and Pale Communion. So when the album was released, I expected some sick riffs, powerful drums, and serious head-banging material all-around the album, while featuring mesmerizing melodies similar to the ones from the two previous albums. So how good was Sorceress?

It was a disaster. A beautiful one. My expectations for this album in my first listen were destroyed by a swarm of unmemorable melodies spread across tracks without any order. It's the absolute definition of "Hit or Miss". Half of its tracks: the title-track, Will O The Wisp, Chrysalis, Strange Brew, and Spring MCMLXXIV make up for a good, enjoyable prog tracklist. Unfortunately, everything else in this album is either filler or completely uninspired music.

The Persephone tracks make up for some nice transitioning between tracks, but two of them? The second part of the title-track has Mikael singing with that god-damned voice-in-the-phone effect. God I hate that voice effect, songs like Harvest, Benighted or Face In The Snow show that Mikael's vocals sound way better without it. And it's not to forget how auto-tuned he sounds in songs like Era. These type of songs stop you from doing full listens of this album.

"Hey I really wanna listen to Sorceress toda- oh wait I'll have to go through those generic filler tracks that take up half of the album? Yeah nevermind...".

It's undeniable that this album has some great moments in it (Specially in the good tracks I mentioned before), but unless you're a die-hard Opeth fan of both eras or Prog-Rock in general, I highly do not recommend this to be your first Opeth album of their first era (Or any of their eras!).

Isaac Peretz | 2/5 | 2020-12-19

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