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~ Drinking out of the hose since 2004 ~ Lounging on the couch since 2007 ~
Welcome to the home of our resident drunken ass clown. Here you will find nothing of substance, and nothing that makes sense. We pay him in dog biscuits and Jack Daniels, so you get what you pay for. Heat? Kitchen? No? Well, get the fuck out.
By Grace
Opeth, short for Opinion Meth, is a new Metal drug that makes fans absolutely frantic with randomly arrogant opinions on whether the band is truly progressive, boringly stagnant, ingeniously brave, or commercially gay. No band has as many camps of fans as Opeth. We all agree they are fucking amazing, but that’s where it ends. Not only do we disagree on whether old Opeth was better than today’s Opeth. We also disagree on most everything else as well; direction, production, atmosphere, playing, cover… Those opinions will also drastically change from album to album, from song to song, from passage to passage within that same song. There are so many sides of this band that the fan base has split up into more sub-groups than the Muslims of the goddamn Middle East. We're fucked in the head that way.
Well, here is the new release before us: Ghost Reveries
The one thing we knew beforehand was that the band had added a permanent keyboard player to their ranks, Per Wiberg. Usually metal heads squirm when keyboards are mentioned in any heavier contexts, but rest assured that Per is adding even darker atmospheres and an even eerier ambience to an already gloomy outfit, rather than any happy Final Countdown chirps or Jens Johansson-like solos. Actually, I think the use of somber Hammond keys really ties Opeth’s two sides together better than before. The shadows have more textures, the darkness more depth.
So what is the new album like? It is fucking brilliant.
I love it.
I want to be buried with it.
Fucking kill me now.
It is the perfect marriage between Damnation’s sorrowful prog-rock and Black Water Park’s complex brutality, while still drawing heavily upon Still Life’s classic midway sound. There is however a distinct progression in the music since we last heard them on Deliverance. The heavy parts are more technical and are now often directly mixed up with clean guitars and fat keyboard chords. Rather than switching from brutal onslaught to melancholic cleanliness in regularly formulated Opeth fashion, the band now integrates the two elements to a wider extent, blending them into a new brand of Opeth metal. It works. It works like a motherfucker. This is Opeth. This is their groove. Like on “Baying of the hounds” for instance, maybe the best track Opeth has ever recorded. It is a mid tempo Death Metal piece with vintage Hammonds in the backgrounds, and the riffing guitars use chord progressions they would normally use for their cleaner parts, but they are now loaded up with heavy ass distortion instead. This is a common theme throughout the album. They have jazzed up the Death parts, and toughened up the clean parts. It all comes together so very beautifully.
Mikael’s heartfelt vocals are cleaner more often than not, and now he’s getting good at it too. Not at all dead, plain or generic anymore, but a solid good voice in its own right. Even the growls are now more “singy” than before. As usual the playing by the musicians themselves is absolutely flawless. Opeth might very well have metal’s best rhythm section in Lopez and Mendez, and the guitars are like a perfectly cooked rib-eye steak; fat and meaty. Mikael’s own guitar playing shows him off as an incredibly talented player with immense tone and a superb understanding for what works within a song.
Other standout songs are the Eastern sounding “Beneath the mire” with its oriental touch, and “Atonement” with its almost Led Zeppelinish groove, feverish pulse and spooky lounge-like piano before it turns into something completely different at the end. There is magic at work when this band decides to explore new territories and push their own boundaries. A true progressive band, tests and rewrites their own formula, taking their sound to new heights without losing their true identity. These guys wrote the book on that.
“Harlequin Forest” leads all the aspects of Opeth into a straightforward dance of darkness where all the different musical undercurrents take turn to surface at times and then dive deep down under again, still carrying the song forward – all in their own way. Still the only really weak track on the album… and as I write that it just shifts shape and becomes just perfect.
More expected classic tracks are “Ghost of Perdition” and “The Grand Conjuration” where they really get to showcase their immense versatility and absolute control of the musical events, swinging wildly from one shade of black to another, from one mood to the next, from heavy and harsh to mellow and fragile. But always with total control and feel for the actual song. Opeth is like a painter, creating fantastic landscapes and crazy motives, all in black and gray of course, but still keeping well within the frame around the picture. They know what they’re doing. These are not random jam sessions.
On the softer side, “Hours of Wealth” and “Isolation Years” could have been two of the best tracks on Damnation. They make the perfect soundtrack to a lonely suicide.
Opeth is never boring. There is no such animal in Opeth-land. I think their biggest problem is that they are too damn good for their own good. Most people just don’t get them. It’s like mixing Pink Floyd, Yes, Dream Theater, Arch Enemy and Napalm Death with a Turkish street orchestra and a band of gypsy mouth harp players on crack...
... but sad, bleak and utterly haunting.
Opeth unfortunately soars well above most people’s perception and/or understanding of music and flies straight out their windows. Untouched and unheard. That’s a damn shame. I could guarantee pretty much anybody to get into this band, if they ever gave them half a chance, sitting through a whole album with no disruptions. Everything is right there. The song writing, the musician ship, the atmosphere, the “it”.
Opeth is no more a Death Metal band than Mozart was just a piano player. Opeth is the most talented metal band you will ever encounter.
Ever.
Opeth
Ghost Reveries
Score: 5/5
