Hey all!
To keep ourselves from going absolutely crazy from the boredom of not playing live we’ve created this little series called SORCERER REACTS TO…where we simply listen to some music and react to it! What a concept eh? Anyway, here’s the first one.
In an intimate livingroom setting at Stockholm’s Popskolan, we and people closely involved in the making of Lamenting Of The Innocent talked about the realization of the new album and answered all of your questions. Highlight of the event was unmistakably the acoustic live set.
For the occasion we presented rearranged versions of Condemned and Deliverance – songs from the new album – and our classic Prayers For A King.
Because of the special nature of the album presentation, we decided to release recordings of this quarantine live set on EP. Sorcerer – The Quarantine Sessions will be available from 25th September on all digital plattforms.
Tracklist – The Quarantine Sessions (Listen on Spotify)
1. Deliverance (Acoustic Live)
2. Condemned (Acoustic Live)
3. Prayers For A King (Acoustic Live)
Hey y’all!
Kristian here.
I’m gonna start uploading a bunch of solo/song lessons in the coming months and we’re starting with this, my solo on the Sorcerer track Ship Of Doom. It’s one of my favorite songs to play live and one of our most “progressive” tunes if I may use that word. Any requests on which solo/song you’d like to see next? Could be Sorcerer, Therion, Demonoid, guest solos I’ve done….anything goes.
Also, please support us by subscribing to our YouTube channel!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0od12OnxmMQ
On 25th September we will be premiering Sorcerer – The Quarantine Sessions; an exclusive, digital only, release of three live acoustic songs. Sorcerer kicked off spring 2020 with the release of our critically acclaimed third album Lamenting Of The Innocent via Metal Blade Records.
The album, hit the official album charts in 4 different countries (#18 in Germany) and was rewarded ‘Album of the Month’ in magazines Deaf Forever and RockHard. In support of the album various summer festivals and club shows were planned.
The unexpected downtime due to COVID-19, called for a creative solution to celebrate and promote the release of the new album. Therefore, on May 23rd we broadcasted our Album Release Party during a 2 hour live stream.
In an intimate livingroom setting at Stockholm’s Popskolan, we and people closely involved in the making of Lamenting Of The Innocent talked about the realization of the new album and answered all of your questions. Highlight of the event was unmistakably the acoustic live set.
For the occasion we presented rearranged versions of Condemned and Deliverance – songs from the new album – and our classic Prayers For A King.
Because of the special nature of the album presentation, we decided to release recordings of this quarantine live set on EP. Sorcerer – The Quarantine Sessions will be available from 25th September on all digital plattforms.
Tracklist – The Quarantine Sessions
1. Deliverance (Acoustic Live)
2. Condemned (Acoustic Live)
3. Prayers For A King (Acoustic Live)
Path To Perdition started life as Ultradoom, another one of those super-creative working titles (not). It was the track we struggled the most with in terms of arrangement; I think I sent 6 or 7 different iterations of it to Anders and Conny before we settled on the final version. In the back of my mind I always had the idea that this should be the track to close out the album and therefore I wanted a big dramatic ending.I initially got the idea for the church organ from Hans Zimmer and his brilliant soundtrack to one of my favourite movies of all time, Interstellar. It just happened to tie in nicely with the overall “church theme” of the lyrics and album cover.
Always a sucker for conceptual continuity (thank you Frank Zappa!) I often try to re-use and build on ideas that I’ve previously employed, and place them somewhere else on the album and see if anyone notices. In this case I used the same three notes for the outro organ part as I’d used for the outro on Age Of The Damned. Another example is the bridge and the chords underneath the guitar solos in the intro. They’re exactly the same. Some might call it lazy writing, I call it “maximizing the potential and employment of good ideas”!
In closing I’d just like to say that personally I’ve never been one to thrive under pressure. I like to take my time with things; they are finished when they are finished. Especially when it comes to music. So for us to give ourselves just a year to write and record an album like this is, from my perspective, a bit of a gamble and quite ballsy. It could have turned out really lame. You’re never sure if you have any good songs left in you but I’m happy to say that I think we did, and that we managed to follow up The Crowning Of The Fire King, which I love, with something equally powerful and consistent. I’m incredibly proud of everybody involved; Jeroen, Ronnie, Dusan, Jani, everybody at MB and of course my awesome bandmates, and I know we gave it the absolute best we had. You can’t beat that feeling.
//Kristian
Writing Condemned started with the vers. My idea was to have the vocals in the space between the guitar chords, but Anders and Conny thought the vocals should follow the guitar, which turned out great. They also came up with the bells and choir in the beginning.
The chorus changes key in a nice way I think. I personally like when there is some unexpected chord changes in a song, but I know Anders sometimes find it hard to come up with good melodies that goes with the chords. I think he succeeds most of the time though:)
// Peter
