Witchcraft Studio Report
- Story by Zach Smith
The Alchemist
Producer: Tomas Hakava
Studio: Up and Running Recordings, Stockholm, Sweden
Recording Dates: June 13 – June 30
Release Date: October
Label: Candlelight/Rise Above
It’s likely that soon after the release of Witchcraft’s third full-length opus, the phone lines over at Sweden’s “culture bureau” will be ringing a more doom-laden tune. After all, if you can call to set up a group chat about the latest Tomas Tranströmer, why not ponder the retro riffs or oft oblique lyrics of another of Sweden’s finest? If you’re lucky, however, you can go right to the source should Witchcraft frontman Magnus Pelander be manning the phones that day, as he was when Decibel rang him to check in on the progress of his band’s new album.
Let’s get the basics out of the way. The album—titled The Alchemist—will contain seven songs, including a re-recording of “If Crimson Was Your Colour,” originally released on a 7-inch single last year. The title track will be a whopping 13 minutes long, and along with another unnamed track that meanders “from happy to more heavy and somber,” marks an even more progressive direction for the Swedish quartet. As with 2005’s Firewood, guitarist John Hoyles assisted Pelander with writing duties, while the band—bassist Ola Henriksson and drummer Jens Henriksson—ended up using very little of its own equipment as the studio was chock full of vintage gear.
While there will be no Pentagram cover this time around, the album is not without at least one subtle shout-out to the band’s heroes. “We played in Washington with Bobby [Liebling, Pentagram frontman],” remembers Pelander. “I remember him telling me that the first track he wrote, he was 11 years old, and it was called ‘Find Your Mind.’ That’s actually the working title of the opening track of the album.”
Pelander doesn’t know what Liebling’s original lyrics addressed, but given the former’s tendencies, it’s safe to say that there could be some similarities between the two, albeit one that might take some group discussion to decipher. “Without sounding pretentious, lyrics are hard to talk about because some of them really don’t make sense when I write them. What I like about lyrics is that you can interpret them however you want to.”
