Review by Daniel for Sorcery (USA-IL) - Till Death Do We Part (1980)
I wasn't much of a fan of the 1978 debut album from Chicago heavy metallers Sorcery to be honest. "Sinister Soldiers" is often referred to as an early example of the US proto-doom movement however I feel that it would be much more accurate to say that it was essentially a 70's hard rock record that's been diluted with various different influences in a noticeably haphazard fashion. So I wasn't too disheartened to read that Sorcery had gone into the recording of their 1980 sophomore album with a fresh new lineup.
New vocalist Jim Kelly is a welcome addition to the band & his vocals are the clear highlight of the album for mine. He sounds a lot like Rob Tyner from MC5 or John Garcia from Kyuss here as he has this cool American drawl thing going on, but unfortunately his performance often loses some of its impact due to the poor production work around him.
"Till Death Do Us Part" doesn't see Sorcery flirting with doom, punk or psychedelic influences in the same way that they did on the debut. This time around we get a sound that sits somewhere between the heavy metal of Black Sabbath & the hard rock of Alice Cooper with some quite abstract & progressive instrumentation & arrangements being employed across the tracklisting. Sorcery were being a little too ambitious for their own good here in my opinion as there are far more misses than hits, leaving us with a fairly unfocused record that sounds like the result of a union between a band & producer that didn’t really know what they were trying to achieve as a creative unit. Just check out the bizarre piano parts for example as they're particularly strange.
Overall, I probably had a little more time for "Sinister Soldiers" than I do for "Till Death Do Us Part" which isn't very encouraging. It's once again filled with some interesting ideas that required much more skill than the band possessed in order to be molded into a final product that makes sense as an album. I guess Sorcery just never really hit the spot for me.