Twenty-five years in, Witchcraft no longer needs to prove anything to anyone. They never really did. But IDAG isnât a victory lap – itâs a weathered, cracked-mirror self-portrait, a record that stares its own history down and dares it to blink. The album title means “today” in Swedish, but this is less about the fleeting present than it is about an ongoing now, a bleeding continuum where the ghosts of early â70s heavy prog and late-night folk strum circles around scorched-earth doom and the kind of introspective collapse only someone whoâs seen too much can truly translate into sound.
Pelanderâs voice – grainy, haunted, unmistakably his – remains the spiritual thread. Whether rasping over the bone-rattling weight of the title track or drifting through the acoustic haze of the albumâs more fragile corners, he sings like heâs communing with some ancient sorrow, channeling both ritual and rot. And thatâs the power here: IDAG doesnât chase a trend, a scene, or even nostalgia. It is the sound of Witchcraftâolder, weirder, cracked in places, but alive and unflinchingly real.
If you’re looking for a checklist of throwback riffs or neatly packaged doom tropes, youâre in the wrong woods. Thereâs a rawness to this record that almost feels confrontational. Itâs not clean. Itâs not pretty. It doesnât care if you liked The Alchemist better. This is the sound of a band folding all their missteps and triumphs into something that breathes with its own battered lungs. The heaviness – when it hits – is seismic, but never gratuitous. More often, it simmers: patient, brooding, waiting to strike.
And the acoustic material? Not a detour, but part of the bloodline. If Black Metal was Pelander shedding skin in solitude, IDAG re-integrates that naked honesty back into the groupâs DNA. The juxtaposition between amp-scorched thunder and quiet, folkish introspection isnât jarring – itâs the whole point. This is music that understands decay as a kind of beauty.
David Stormâs mix keeps things suitably unvarnished. No studio gloss, no spit shine – just the room, the gear, and the intent. The rhythm section – Pilossian on bass, Hjulstrom behind the kit – doesnât need to showboat. They serve the vision, propelling without overwhelming, a skeleton that holds the weight of these songs without trying to steal their shape.
Witchcraft have always existed just outside the lines, dodging the convenience of easy classification. They helped ignite the whole retro-heavy boom in the early 2000s, then spent the rest of their career distancing themselves from its clichĂ©s. With IDAG, theyâve come full circle without repeating a thing. Thereâs lineage here – from Pentagramâs seething minimalism to Comusâs psych-folk disorientation to Sabbathâs eternal gravity – but itâs all filtered through a cracked Nordic lens, more concerned with mood than mimicry.
This isnât an album for the algorithm. Itâs not playlist fodder. Itâs a full body of work, meant to be lived with. It might not click on first spin, but give it time – itâs a slow burn, a spell with a delayed effect. You wake up days later humming a melody you canât place, with a weight in your chest you didnât have before.
IDAG is Witchcraftâs most honest record. Not their catchiest, not their darkest, but the one that feels most like a full reckoning. It doesnât try to be definitive, which is probably why it ends up feeling that way.
This oneâs going to age like hand-dug grave dirt – slow, strange, and essential.
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Released by Heavy Psych Sounds Records on May 23rd, 2025
