Tag Archives: Opeth

Opeth - Heritage

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Tim Hall

Sweden’s Opeth have proved themselves one of the most original and creative prog-metal bands of the past decade. On recent albums such as “Ghost Reveries” and “Watershed” Mikael Åkerfeldt and his band balanced moments of delicate beauty with moments of brutal heaviness, and it was the way they seamlessly combined the two that was a big part of the appeal.

With their tenth album they could have taken the easy option of trying to repeat a successful formula. But instead they’ve taken an abrupt turn, and done something completely different.

Gone are the death-metal growls. While it still has it’s heavier moments it’s can’t really be described as a metal album. The whole thing has a warm, retro 70s vibe, with echoes of artists as diverse as King Crimson, Frank Zappa and Uriah Heep. There is still much here that wouldn’t have sounded out of place in the quieter moments of the last couple of albums, and they still eschew traditional song structures in favour of complex epics with constantly shifting moods. Mikael Åkerfeldt again shows how good a vocalist he can be when he sings in a ‘clean’ style, and he’s got a keen ear for unorthodox but beautiful melodies.

Even with death-metal stripped out, it’s an enormously varied album. It begins with a very simple unaccompanied classical piano piece, a gentle lead-in for the delights to come. The hard rock of “Slither” with it’s barrelling rhythm comes over as a very deliberate homage to Deep Purple, with a riff and solo that’s pure Ritchie Blackmore. Then there’s the strongly jazz-tinged “Nepenthe” and “Hāxprocess”. An undoubted highlight is the penultimate track “Folklore” with a dramatic closing section which has to be one of the most exciting pieces of music I’ve heard all year. It ends, as it began, with an instrumental. The semi-acoustic “Marrow of the Earth” starts out sounding like a Blackmore’s Night piece, but builds to assume a melancholic grandeur beyond the scope of anything that band have done.

While this is likely to disappoint some out-and-out metal fans, this is still a very impressive release, and a strong candidate for progressive rock release of the year. There is endless debate in prog circles as to whether the term should refer to bands who try to capture the actual sound of classic 70s progressive rock, or for bands who evoke the same spirit of adventure of music without boundaries. Opeth are a rare band that fulfil both of these, sounding both unapologetically nostalgic and absolutely contemporary at the same time. Almost nobody else can pull that off as well as Opeth can.

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Credit Where Credit’s Due

Posted on September 16, 2011 by Tim Hall

For years I’ve complained about The Guardian’s woeful coverage of metal and progressive rock. Major releases are either overlooked entirely, or worse still, given a cursory dismissal by someone with no knowledge or respect for the genre. Dave Simpson’s attempt to review Yes is a prime example. Even their most positive reviews came from the viewpoint of an outsider looking in.

Which is why it’s good to see Dom Lawson, of Metal Hammer and Classic Rock Presents Prog fame reviewing Opeth’s Heritage. It’s not a long, detailed review, but it certainly doesn’t read like Tony Blackburn attempting to review The Fall.

One swallow does not necessarily make a summer, but I hope we get to read more reviews by Dom Lawson in the future.

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Why they review what they review.

Posted on March 24, 2010 by Tim Hall

An article on The Guardian Media Site has turned into an interesting tangential discussion on exactly how The Guardian decides on what to and what not to review.

Film and Music editor Michael Hann came up with this gem:

Other albums that “have to be reviewed” are the ones that are achingly hip, or from artists one would expect to see reviewed in the Guardian - the likes of Bonnie “Prince” Billy, for example.

This drew a wonderful spleen-filled response one noted metal fan, to which Hann responded.

And features are actually a better way of contextualising minority interest musics than reviews are, especially when accompanied - as our features usually are - by a playlist.

Which ignores the fact that hipster-indie is as much a minority interest music as metal. Except that the groupthinking Guardian writers don’t seem to be able to realise this.

So far, I haven’t had a response to exactly why they “have to review” Bonnie “Prince” Billy, but did not have space to review Opeth’s “Watershed”. A cursory glance at the sorts of tour venues the two artists play suggests both are of similar standing in terms of audience style. While I know popularity isn’t everthing, I cannot see how the relative merits of progressive death metal vs.lo-fi indie folk are down to anything other than purely subjective taste.

Or is it simply Opeth are further from their comfort zone than hipster-indie?

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Another 2009 Roundup - Live Music

Posted on January 1, 2010 by Tim Hall

Yet another end-of-year roundup, this time live music.

  • Best Gig - Has to be Progressive Nation at Manchester. A great performance from headliners Dream Theater, a superb one hour set by co-headliner Opeth, and good supports from BigElf and Unexpect, neither of whom I’d seen or heard of before.
  • Worst Gig - Pure Reason Revolution playing in an awful venue that really didn’t do them justice.
  • Strangest Gig - Breathing Space playing a sold-out village hall in Nottinghamshire in snowy February.
  • Biggest Disappointment - Not seeing Karnataka at the Cambridge Rock Festival due to PA company snafu.
  • Band of the Year - Has to be Mostly Autumn, of course. I saw them no fewer that twelve times over the year, always good, with their Halloween show at Burnley possibly the best of the year. They recorded the whole of the spring tour, of which I saw several gigs, and the recordings make up the excellent Live 2009 pair of albums. A great band, and a lovely group of people too.

The overall verdict for the year can be summed up with the word “Progtastic”.

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Top Ten Albums of the Noughties

Posted on December 8, 2009 by Tim Hall

Loads of other people are doing subjective lists of best albums of the past decade - here are mine. I always think personal lists are much more interesting than the sorts of bland lists of CDs you can get in Tesco’s compiled by committees that you’ll see in the mainstream.media But I would say that, wouldn’t I?

In order to keep it varied I’ve imposed a rule that no artist may appear more than once in the top 10.

  • 10: Nightwish - Dark Passion Play
    There are so many female-fronted symphonic metal bands coming from various parts of Europe that it’s very difficult to single out just one. Finland’s Nightwish throw choirs, orchestras, Uilleann pipes and kitchen sinks into a gloriously over-the-top album mixing metal and opera with a touch of celtic folk, with new singer Anette Olzon adding a touch of warmth to lead vocals that’s missing from some bands in the genre.
  • 9: The Pineapple Thief - Tightly Unwound
    The Pineapple Thief describle themselves as ‘indie prog’, whatever that’s supposed to mean. Some sonic similarities with pre-Kid A Radiohead, but with more traditional style rock vocals, and a extremely strong sense of melody, which is what makes this album stand out.
  • 8: The Mars Volta - Deloused in the Comatorium
    After a string of disappointing albums over the past few years it’s easy to forget just how great their incendiary debut was. What’s been described as a mix of speed-metal and free jazz somehow combines the raw energy of punk with the complexity and technical skill of progressive rock. It’s all completely bonkers, but in a good way.

  • 7: Breathing Space - Below the Radar
    The York band really come of age with their third album. They may have dropped the jazzier elements of their sound in favour of a harder rock edge, but they still find room for some atmospheric ballads and big soaring epics which showcase Olivia Sparnenn’s amazing voice. Iain Jennings production job gives the lie to the idea that you need a major-label budget to come up with a great-sounding album.
  • 6: Porcupine Tree - In Absentia
    It’s difficult to choose a single Porcupine Tree album out of several great ones they’ve recorded over the past decade. Indeed, with the possible exception of 2005′s slight misstep of Deadwing, all their albums in the noughties have been classics. If the 90s charted their progress from ambient Floydian soundscapes to a more song-orientated approach, 2002′s In Absentia saw them add some metal to the mix. The combination of some Zeppelineque riffing and some darkly ambiguous lyrics may have lost them some older fans, but introduced them to a younger audience of metal fans.
  • 5 Karnataka - Strange Behaviour
    Some may say including a live album in the decade’s top ten may be cheating, but this is my blog, where I make up the rules. Strange Behaviour caught the atmospheric celtic-tinged prog outfit just when they seemed poised for a major breakthrough, the live dynamics making the songs far more powerful than the studio recordings. Sadly this double album turned out to their magnificent swansong, and the band were to implode shortly after it’s release.
  • 4 Marillion - Marbles
    Marillion are a rare example of a veteran act who can still make great new music more than two decades into their career. Their output in the noughties may have been uneven, but this double album shows the Steve Hogarth incarnation of the band at their best; a hugely varied work which goes from experiments with drum loops and dub rhythms to huge soaring epics filled with Steve Rothery’s trademark sustain-drenched guitar. Ignore the single-disk retail edition; you need the double album available only from the band’s website.
  • 3 Fish - 13th Star
    Marillion’s former frontman’s career seemed to be petering out by the middle of the decade after a couple of disappointingly weak albums. But he bounced back very strongly indeed with this one. Musically it’s far removed from the ornate neo-prog of 80′s Marillion, a mix of metallic grooves and heart-on-sleeve ballads, lyrically it’s just about the most intense and emotionally charged thing he’s even done.
  • 2 Opeth - Blackwater Park
    Sweden’s Opeth combine death metal with 70′s style pastoral prog-rock to produce the perfect antidote to anyone who thinks heavy metal hasn’t progressed since Toni Iommi started playing tritones through a fuzzbox way back in 1970. Blackwater Park, produced by Porcupine Tree’s Steve Wilson, marks the point where they established their signature sound, Mikael Åkerfeldt switching back and forth between ‘Cookie Monster’ and ‘clean’ vocals, and the music switching back and forth between dense swirling heavyness and reflective acoustic passages. Metal has never quite been the same since.
  • 1 Mostly Autumn - The Last Bright Light
    As I said at the very beginning, this is a personal list. And this is the album which has changed my life more than any of the preceding ones. This was very much the coming-of-age album for York’s finest progressive rock band, and marked the high point of their celtic-prog phase of their career, full of soaring and emotionally powerful epics making use of flutes and even crumhorns alongside traditional rock instruments. Although they subsequently moved to the more polished commercial sound of the follow-up Passengers, even now their live sets still draw heavily from this album.

There are plenty of other great albums just outside the top 10; Therion’s totally bonkers choral metal Gothic Kabbalah, Muse’s recent The Resistance, IQ’s neo-prog masterpiece Frequency, Pure Reason Revolution’s hypnotically captivating The Dark Third, either of The Reasoning’s two albums, and Dream Theater’s recent return to form Black Clouds and Silver Linings.

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Progressive Nation - Manchester Apollo, 09-Oct-2009

Posted on October 11, 2009 by Tim Hall

The Progressive Nation tour is an ambitious package tour highlighting the best of prog-metal. Effectively a double headliner of Opeth and Dream Theater, plus two support bands, doors opened at 5:30, with the music starting just after six, making it a real marathon if you were standing. And the early start meant it was straight to the gig from work, without having time to have anything to eat. The things I do for rock and roll. Or rather prog.

Openers Unexpect were a completely bonkers female-fronted seven-piece including a fiddle player. While they played with high level of energy, unfortunately poor sound meant a lot of the intricacies of their music were lost; the vocals especially being lost in the mix. Such is the fate of opening acts in large venues, but they still impressed enough for me to buy their album,

Four-piece BigElf took the stage with a Hammond organ, a Mellotron and an analogue synth centre-stage. They played a sort of psychedelic stoner-prog, very reminiscent of Atomic Rooster with elements of early Uriah Heep. Impressive live band despite poor sound. Top-hatted lead singer Damon Fox playing the Hammond in one hand and the Mellotron in the other had to be the image of the evening.

The sound improved dramatically when Swedish death-metal/prog crossovers Opeth took the stage. Tonight they emphasised the ‘progressive’ emphasis of the evening by opening with “Windowpane” from their decidedly un-metal “Damnation” album. The six-song hour-long set mixed their progressive and metal sides, which a powerful rendition of “Deliverance” one of the metallic standouts. “Harlequin Forest”, not played live in Britain before, was stunningly beautiful, the highlight of the entire evening. Only downer was the constant buzz of background talking from Dream Theater fans that was audible throughout the quiet bits.

It’s seven or eight years since I’ve seen Dream Theater live. Love them or hate them, Dream Theater have more or less defined the genre of muso prog metal, playing insanely complex music in wierd time signatures with plenty of extended solos. Bassist John Myung in particular is as interesting to watch as to listen to, his fingers flying up and down the fretboard as if he’s playing lead guitar, and John Pettruci and Jordan Rudess played enormous numbers of notes. Only vocalist James LaBrie let the side down in places, and I have to say too much of his singing is rather ordinary. The setlist drew heavily from the new album “Black Clouds and Silver Linings”, opening with “A Nightmare to Remember” and “A Rite of Passage”. They also played quite a bit from their superb “Scenes From a Memory” including the completely over-the-top instrumental workout “The Dance of Eternity”, and 80s-style power ballad “The Spirit Carries On”, complete with a sea of lighters in the air. They encored with a stunning rendition of the epic “The Count of Tuscany”.

Gig of the year? It’s definitely a candidate.

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Top Ten Albums of the Year 2008

Posted on December 11, 2008 by Tim Hall

I wasn’t originally going to arrange these in order, but in the end I did it anyway, just to annoy those people who hate ranked lists.

10. Van der Graaf Generator - Trisector
Reduced to a trio after the departure of David Jackson, this album proves the slimmed-down version of the 70s progressive rock veterans can still deliver an album in the same league as their 2005 comeback album “Present”

9. Magenta - Metamorphosis
Magenta are very much old-school Prog, wearing their Yes, Genesis and Mike Oldfield influences on their sleeve, playing 20 minute epics with titles like ‘The Ballad of Samual Layne’. They get away with it though superior songwriting and arrangement, and stunning individual performances from Christina Booth on vocals and Chris Fry on guitar.

8. Josh and Co - Through These Eyes
This solo album from Bryan Josh of Mostly Autumn appeared out of the blue at the end of November. Has a similar sound and production to Mostly Autumn’s last album, but the songs are looser and more contemporary-sounding. Quite dark in places, playfully self-indulgent in others, and Bryan cuts loose on the guitar in a way that shows how much he’d been holding back on recent Mostlies releases; I haven’t heard him shred like that for ages. Although Bryan naturally handles most of the vocals, there are also some quite stunning contributions from Olivia Sparnenn which really make me look forward to the next Breathing Space album

7. Uriah Heep - Wake the Sleeper
Nine years since their last studio album, and the mighty Heep are back with a powerful statement that the hard rock veterans are very much in business. Ironically for a band who have spent much of their career in the shadow of the much bigger and more successful Deep Purple, they’ve now come up with something that blows away anything Purple have done in the last nine years. It compares very favourably with their best output from their 70s heyday, and I don’t think they’ve ever rocked harder than this.

6. Panic Room - Visionary Position
The debut from the band that grew out of the ashes of Karnataka, fronted by Anne-Marie Helder. Three years in the making, it’s a rich multilayered album with a real mix of styles from hard rock, folk, pop and full-blown prog which was well worth the wait.

5. Pineapple Thief - Tightly Unwound
Pineapple Thief are one of the new generation of progressive rock bands who mix elements of 70s progressive rock with more contemporary influences to give a streamlined modern sound rather than produce a pastiche of older bands. You can hear the influence of both early Radiohead and Porcupine Tree on this album, although thankfully we’re spared Thom Yorke-style whining vocals, and there is definitely no shortage of tunes.

4. Mostly Autumn - Glass Shadows
A strong release which is a marked improvement on the patchy and badly-produced “Heart Full of Sky” even if it doesn’t quite match their best work. Written entirely by Bryan Josh and Heather Findlay this time around, it’s more mainstream melodic rock than the celtic-tinged prog of their early work, but retains the 70s vibe that’s still a major element of their sound. Musically it has hard rockers, shimmering piano ballads, dreamy atmospheric numbers and soaring guitar-driven epics. Lyrically they’re certainly not singing about Hobbits any more, this is a true life story about heartbreak, joy, tragedy and hope.

3. Opeth - Watershed
2005′s “Ghost Reveries” wasn’t an easy album to follow, but Opeth managed to equal it with “Watershed“, which contains all their trademark elements; piledriving heavy passages alternating with delicate guitar harmonies, Mikael Åkerfeldt’s vocals swapping back and forth between harsh ‘cookie monster’ and heartfelt clean vocals, typically all in the same song. It’s not an easy listen, songs average ten minutes, and don’t have anything as crassly commercial as conventional verses or choruses. But when you get what they’re doing, the result can only be described as ‘symphonic’.

2. Marillion - Happiness is the Road
This double album is a vast improvement on last year’s patchy “Somewhere Else“. The two disks are conceived as two separate single albums; the atmospheric “Essence“, and the rockier “The Hard Shoulder“. Both contain plenty of gems and very little filler. Stylistically it’s the same contemporary sound as recent albums rather than a reversion to an earlier sound. Steve Hogarth is on great form, using his voice as much as a musical instrument rather than solely to express the lyrics, and Steve Rothery demonstrates in many places why he’s one of the best rock guitarists out there.

1. The Reasoning - Dark Angel
It’s difficult to choose just one album as my album of the year, but in the end I’ve settled for The Reasoning’s second album. Last year’s debut “Awakening” was one of my top albums of last year, a great mix of melodic hard rock with progressive flavouring, with three-part vocal harmones and a powerful twin lead guitar attack. This one takes things to another level, adding some metal to the mix, full of melodies that get stuck in your brain, sublime vocals from Rachel Cohen, and some amazing but never self-indulgent playing from new guitarist Owain Roberts.

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November Gig Madness - Opeth

Posted on November 30, 2008 by Tim Hall

Second part of my November gig spree was under the effects of a bad cold, which at it’s worst had me off work for two days. And I think I caught it at the Heep gig.

Sunday night was back to Manchester Academy 1, and Opeth, for night of Swedish death metal that goes ‘Grrrrrr’

I’ve afraid I don’t remember an awful lot about the two supports, Cynic and The Ocean. One was all cookie-monster metal, the other more proggy with 100% clean vocals. Both quite enjoyable at the time, but not terribly memorable at the a week later, although the combination of lemsip and beer that kept me going probably didn’t help.

Opeth themselves are a lot more than a pure metal band nowadays; either that or metal has developed tremendously as a genre since Tony Iommi first started playing tritones through a fuzzbox. Their sound has been described as ‘symphonic’ - not in the sense of big sweeping keyboards, but in their complex multi-layered song structures, with twin-guitar harmonies and strange time-signatures. They completely eschew anything as conventional as ordinary verses and choruses, and typically include piledriving heavyness, gentle semi-acoustic sections, and densely intricate instrumental passages, usually in the same lengthy song. Mikael Åkerfeldt lead vocals alternate between harsh growls and soaring ‘clean’ vocals.

The awesomely tight band reproduce all that dense swirling sound from their albums note-for-note, helped by a clear (and not deafeningly loud) sound. Their 90-minute set included just eight songs, including two, ‘Heir Apparent’ and ‘The Lotus Eaters’ from the new album “Watershed”. Difficult to single out a single high spot, but it was nice to hear ‘Deliverance’ and ‘The Drapery Falls’.

Opeth might just sound like a wall of noise to the uninitiated, and it took me a long time to ‘get’ them, especially Åkerfeldt’s Cookie Monster growls. Live, they’re just magnificent.

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CD Review: Opeth - Watershed

Posted on June 15, 2008 by Tim Hall

Swedish death prog metallers Opeth have done it again! I wondered if their ninth album “Watershed” could possibly top 2005′s superb “Ghost Reveries”. But with this new one, they’ve taken their mix of Scandinavian cookie-monster death metal and 70s pastoral English prog to yet another level.

There’s a bit less of the old cookie monster on this one; Michael Åkerfeldt sings ‘clean’ on quite a few of the heavier parts as well as the many quieter sections. But the appeal to me has always been the complex symphonic instrumentation rather than the vocals, with Åkerfeldt’s voice as another instrument. These guys are superb musicians, but never once descend into self-indulgent widdling. Åkerfeldt comes over as a composer first, and a muso second. And that’s how it should be.

It’s got all the trademark Opeth sounds; dense swirling guitars, piledrivingly heavy sections giving way to gentler acoustic passages, and some beautiful twin guitar harmonies with Michael Åkerfeldt and new guitarist Fredrik Åkesson. Per Wiberg’s keys are more fully integrated into the band’s sound on this disk; check out the fantastic Hammond organ solo on “Burden” (And I bet that’s a genuine B3, not a synth with a Hammond patch!). And naturally there’s plenty of Mellotron.

While there are still many extremely heavy moments, the balance seems tilted slightly more in favour of quieter more atmospheric parts; you can hear a strong Camel influence in one or two places. Out-and-out metal fans might not rate it quite as highly as their early work, but prog fans who liked their decidedly non-metal “Damnation” will find much here to enjoy. For me, its the contrast between the lighter and heavier sides of their music that accounts for a lot of their appeal.

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Opeth/Paradise Lost, Manchester Academy 1, 10-Nov-2006

Posted on November 14, 2006 by Tim Hall

Sweden’s death metal meets prog rock Opeth are probably an acquired taste. If the first time you listen to Opeth’s music, you think ‘What on Earth is that racket’, then your reaction won’t have been dissimilar to mine. But listen a few more times. Once you get beneath the surface you’ll begin to appreciate their dense and multi-layered sound. Their eight studio albums are filled with songs typically lasting ten minutes or more, which have little as straightforward as identifiable verses or choruses. Piledrivingly heavy sections frequently give way to gentle semi-acoustic sections. Vocals vary from death metal ‘Cookie Monster’ style to some quite mellow ‘clean’ vocals. And it all meshes together perfectly to create something almost symphonic in scope.

Last time Opeth came to Manchester, their show in the smaller Academy 2 sold out before I could get hold a ticket. On their return, they played the larger Academy 1, and I made sure I got a ticket early. I wasn’t going to miss them a second time.

Support was Yorkshire doom metallers Paradise Lost, veterans of sixteen years and eight albums. Due to the show starting 15 minutes earlier than advertised, I spend two or three minutes too long in the pub (talking to a couple of Mostly Autumn fans, as it happens; they get everywhere!), and missed the beginning of their opening number. They delivered a consummate and professional 45 minute set before an appreciative audience, concentrating on their earlier, heavier material, although the very Goth ‘One Second’ album got a good airing. It almost seemed that they were the headliners at times, which is a sign of a good performance. The only thing that annoys me about their sound is their insistence on using programmed keyboards on quite a few songs. Please, guys, since the keys are such an integral part of the sound, get yourself a flesh-and-blood keyboard player and make it 100% live!

Opeth took the stage at nine, and for the next two hours proved that their reputation as a great act is fully justified. They can indeed reproduce the full majesty of their material live, and the songs come over incredibly well in a live setting. They had that very rare combination extreme tightness and ferocious energy levels, something you very rarely get in the same band. The guitar sound was crystal-clear, the often very complex twin guitar harmonies coming over perfectly. The intense heavy sections turned the hall into a sea of flying hair, then the quiet reflective parts came in just in time to get your breath back. Mikael Åkerfeldt’s lead vocals were quite low in the mix, especially for the ‘Cookie Monster’ parts. This actually works quite well, and I think the mix was intentional. He was certainly clear enough when he sang ‘clean’.

Not satisfied with being a great guitar player and composer, Mikael Åkerfeldt is also a superb frontman with a great sense of humour. Between the songs he regaled us with tales from the band’s early history, made the audience play ‘guess this tune’ by playing various intros, and told us how the drummer allegedly turns into a psychopath when under the influence of Coca-Cola.

While they played quite a bit of their latest opus, “Ghost Reveries”, the setlist also drew heavily from their early albums “Orchid”, “Morningrise” and “My Arms, Your Hearse” rather than other more recent releases, which meant that I didn’t know a good proportion of the set; it sounds like I’ve got some CD buying to do!

Overall, superb show, up there with the best I’ve seen this year. This is a band I’ll be seeing again next time they come to town.

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