When the lyrics of an album’s flagship song cryptically begin with “I am a sinner and I worship evil,” one might start to suspect a creation right from the workshop of black metal satanists. Yet, Swedish progressive metal band Opeth’s 12th album is anything but monotonous gurgling and the indistinguishable sounds of electric guitars. Time and time again these Stockholm natives prove that metal as a genre can have many faces.
Relying on the mellow purr of acoustic guitar, Sorceress has something for everyone. From heavy bass-supported pieces like “Sorceress” or “The Wilde Flowers,” through hybrids underlining lead singer Åkerfeldt’s hypnotic voice range like “Chrysalis” and “Fleeting Glance,” all the way to folk based “Will O the Wisp,” Sorceress is not just pure musical progressiveness and experimentation but also carries in itself a certain grounding quality through earthy tones of organ and other classical instruments. It’s refreshing to see such a multifaceted product in an otherwise fusty genre of hard music. It’s not just the mixture of traditional musical instruments in combination with metal riffs, however, that separates Opeth’s Sorceress from other symphonic metal albums like Nightwish’s Century Child or Haggard’s Awaking the Centuries. It is the composition of the whole piece which brings together a Korn-like voice and an underpaint of dark, rich instrumental tones, fused together so tightly that particular components cannot be divided. You definitely aren’t a sinner when you worship Opeth, one of the few experimental metal projects who got it right, and Sorceress is a testimony to the fact that metal is not dead — yet.
