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Witchcraft are the Swedish occult doom outfit Magnus Pelander started in Orebro back in 2000, a fuzz-soaked tribute to Pentagram and Roky Erickson built on warm 1970s analog tones, traditional doom riffing, and a psychedelic, proggy hard-rock streak. With Ida Elin Tannerdal on bass and Johan "Jussi" Kalla on drums, Pelander steers Idag, their seventh album and first in five years, back to lo-fi grit: their heaviest material yet, knotted up with acoustic folk-doom and a few Swedish-language passages.
Our connection is simple. We loved this record enough to put our name on it, so we are pressing it as a Levitation Edition: the Spirit Smash + Splatter LP, limited to 150 copies. One run, one color, and then it is gone.
After the glossier Nuclear Blast years, Idag feels like Witchcraft remembering what made them great. The fuzz is raw again, the tape hiss is back, and Pelander leans hard into the contrast: doom that genuinely crushes sits right next to hushed acoustic passages and those Swedish vocal turns that give the whole thing a haunted, hand-built feel. Twenty-five years in, it sounds like a band that finally stopped chasing polish and trusted the room they were tracking in.
We are not alone on this. Angry Metal Guy framed it as a pleasant surprise, and The Obelisk read it as cohesion. Both landed near where we did: a scrappy, retro course-correction. Our one honest gripe is that the lo-fi approach occasionally swallows the low end, and a couple of the softer turns drift before the riffs pull you back.
None of that is a dealbreaker. This is a record built for wax, all analog warmth and dynamic swing, and the Spirit Smash + Splatter color suits its murk. At 150 copies, it earns the pressing and then some.
Recommended if you like: Kadavar, Dead Meadow, Black Rainbows.
