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A Quiet Kind of Haunting: Witchcraft - A Sinner's Child (EP Review) Released: 3/13/26

 



There's a particular kind of courage in restraint, and Witchcraft has always understood this better than most. Following hot on the heels of IDAG their long-awaited seventh album and a record that felt like a full summation of over two decades of growth Magnus Pelander and company return not with another grand statement, but with something quieter and, in many ways, more affecting: A Sinner's Child, a five-track EP that strips the Witchcraft sound down to its very nerve endings. Where IDAG felt like a nexus, a gathering of everything the band has been and done, A Sinner's Child feels like the exhale that follows. Pelander, as vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, is the EP's beating heart, and he navigates its emotional terrain with the kind of lived-in ease that only comes from two-plus decades of honest songwriting. The opening track, "Drömmen Om Död Och Förruttnelse" and "Själen Reser Sig" anchor the EP in the melodic proto-doom depth that first made Witchcraft a generational force, shadowy, heavy with atmosphere, and unmistakably theirs.

The title track and its companion piece "Sinner's Clear Confusion" offer a lighter but no less resonant counterpoint, rooted in luminous folk that recalls the more acoustic and introspective directions Pelander has explored throughout his career. There's a lineage here that runs back through Black Metal's minimalism and even further, to the band's earliest days in Örebro, and yet it never feels nostalgic or backward-looking. It feels present. The centerpiece might well be "Even Darker Days," a soulful acoustic dirge that sits in that rare space where simplicity becomes devastation. It's the kind of song that makes you feel like you're overhearing something deeply personal, the sort of moment Witchcraft have always been capable of, but which feels especially raw here.

As an EP, A Sinner's Child is exactly what it should be: not filler between albums, but a genuine artifact of a band at their most vulnerable and unguarded. Pelander's songwriting has never been more direct or more stirring, and for longtime fans, this release offers a rare intimacy, a chance to sit close to the source of what has made Witchcraft one of doom folk's most enduring works and acts as essential listening for devotees, and a fine entry point for the curious.


Check out their title track A Sinner's Child:  


Go give them a follow on Instagram: Witchcraft


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