"Sorceress", the new album from Swedish progressive metallers OPETH, debuted at No. 24 on The Billboard 200, having shifted 16,000 equivalent album units in the week ending October 6. The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week based on multi-metric consumption, which includes traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). "Sorceress" first-week chart positions: Germany: #1 Australia: #7 The Netherlands #11 UK: #11 USA: #24 OPETH's twelfth album, "Sorceress", was released on September 30. For the band's first effort for Nuclear Blast via OPETH's imprint label Moderbolaget Records, the group returned to Rockfield Studios in Wales, also home to pivotal releases from QUEEN, RUSH and JUDAS PRIEST, where the Swedes had tracked "Pale Communion" in 2014 with Tom Dalgety. The band spent twelve days recording at the countryside venue among its serene and inspiring surroundings. About the new album title, OPETH guitarist/vocalist Mikael Åkerfeldt told Fuse: "In the U.S., touring back in the day, I used to pick up '60s [and] '70s horror films from Amoeba Records, especially, in L.A., pick these DVDs up for fairly cheap. So I used to watch those, but it was the whole imagery of that, and that word resonated with me for some reason once I wrote it in a lyric. I figured that's a good title, actually. But I wouldn't say I have a particular sorceress in mind, it's more of a collective word for...I don't want to say evil women, but I'll say evil women anyway." In a recent interview with The Quietus, Mikael stated about OPETH: I never considered us to be a virtuoso-type band. If you leave me out of it, the other guys are fucking great musicians. They can play circles around me and a lot of other musicians on the planet I think: they're fantastic. But I've never really been interested in that. I've always valued the quality of a song more, at least what I deem to be a quality song. So I don't think we ever gave in to the temptation of songs with showing off parts. Some parts are a bit show-offy but I've always felt that there's been something else to those sorts of parts too that I think adds value to the song, if you know what I mean. I can't remember a single part that I've written that is meant to impress people in that sense of, 'Oh fuck, these guys are great musicians.' I think of us more as a collective and once you do that you automatically think more of the quality of the song, as opposed to exposing each individual as a fantastic player. I mean, they are, but we never flaunted that."
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