A few minutes ago a friend of mine pointed me in the direction of a new Opeth track streaming on Youtube, which happens to be the title track from the group’s forthcoming album Sorceress, or so it claims to be. Assuming this was from Nuclear Blast Records or a member of the group itself, I opted to check it out and write a piece up on it so the metal could be spread around properly. However, it turns out this was just a leak from a random user (or so it would appear given said user has only uploaded this video to that channel and it surprisingly has yet to be taken down) with a link to download said song. Due to that, I won’t be including the video and you guys can go find it for yourselves if it still exists. That said, this song was not quite what I was expecting.

This is not the video mentioned but rather one I found embedded in a Blabbermouth.net article without said download link.

“Sorceress” starts off with more of a distorted jazz sound that reminded me of the audio to a gritty detective game on the Sega Genesis console. It had that noir atmosphere that felt like I should be engrossed in the world of Dick Tracy. But after a good eighty seconds, the performance shifts to more of a viking metal sound along the lines of early Tyr, but with some progressive rock traits scattered about. Eventually the track took on a lighter approach with some echoed vocal effects and layering that reminded me of Ghost, a trait I leaned towards at the start as well but wasn’t entirely truthful of the experience at the time to be worth lumping in. The closing, however, was a bit more spastic overall, but nothing too outside the norm for these guys.

Really, my only gripes about the song itself stem from that introduction I alluded to, which feels a bit too jovial for the lavish and bleak music that follows, as well as the matte sounding audio quality. Sure, it separates some aspects from being an outright modern rock radio novelty, but it just feels like Opeth is trying to capitalize on that warm vinyl sound, only making it feel further fabricated like a good majority of the underground black metal bands trying to mimic the sound of a cassette in digital format. Both of these I honestly could have lived without, but hopefully will make some sort of sense when incorporated with the full-length.

If this is an actual track off Sorceress and not a joke I didn’t pick up on (which I doubt as the friend who shot over the link is a die-hard Opeth fan) then yes, it would appear that Sorceress is shaping up to be another progressive rock album from Opeth, further shedding themselves of the heaviness that defined the group over the years. But, really, this isn’t all that bad a thing. The song itself is a damn good one that had me hovering my mouse over that download link, fighting the urge to say fuck it and add it to my library. The more I listen to the song, the more I like it, and I get the feeling that’s exactly how Sorceress is going to be as a whole. Am I excited? More than I was before, and the fact I’m having a hard time walking away from this one song makes me think this upcoming album is going to be worth picking up.