OPETH Sorceress 2CD (2016)

By 2016 the death metal purists had already written Opeth off. Sorceress didn't care. It was too busy being one of the most interesting heavy records of the decade.

The thirteenth album finds Åkerfeldt fully committed to the 70s progressive rock rabbit hole he'd been digging since Heritage, but Sorceress has more teeth than its predecessors. There's doom in the low end, there's psychedelia in the arrangements, and there's a title track that builds like weather. The band recorded it at Rockfield Studio in Wales, the same room that gave us Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody and Black Sabbath's Never Say Die. That history seeps through every track. Sweden meets the Welsh countryside and somehow sounds ancient and strange and exactly right.

2016 full length, 2CD digipak, Swedish pressing. Fans of: Devin Townsend, Gojira, Anathema, Nevermore, Soen, Amorphis, Mastodon.