Bergen-based supergroup-of-sorts Sahg (having featured current and former members of Audrey Horne and Gorgoroth) might have formed with the honourable intention of indulging their love of rock’s progenitors, and their Led Zep/Sabbath-loving, balls-to-the-wall doom might have struck all the right chords on 2006’s I but proving the law of diminishing returns its follow-ups, II and III proved too much of the same.
Three years on they’re back with a concept album. Don’t let those words scare you, however, because in subtly refreshing, expanding and finessing their sound they have produced arguably their strongest record yet.
Centred thematically around the story of “a person whose delusions of grandeur escalate to the level where they consume him completely” and inspired by the imagery of the films 2001 and Metropolis, Delusions… retains the classic riff’n’rock sound but finds it imbued with the sort of finger-flailing Mastodon are known for and the dark melancholy of late-era Opeth, most prominently during the engrossing epic, Walls Of Delusion.
