Tag: opeth

Album of the Month: Opeth – ‘Pale Communion’

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It’ll be no surprise to anyone who’s been reading this blog for a while to see Opeth mentioned here again. They’ve been one of my favourite bands ever since I discovered them, well over a decade ago, and their music has seen me through thick and thin. Although a metal band in their early days, Opeth’s music has very much drifted into the progressive spectrum with recent albums, a shift that has divided old fans but brought them legions of new ones. Am I sometimes a little nostalgic for the old, death metal Opeth? Yes. However, I’ve long been a prog fan too, and ‘Pale Communion’ proves just how perfectly Opeth have been able to embrace the genre.

Although their previous album also had strong progressive leanings, ‘Pale Communion’ is a very different beast. Whereas ‘Heritage’ never quite seemed to find its rhythm, sometimes sounding a bit too laboured, ‘Pale Communion’ is entirely cohesive, working best – as many prog albums do – when listened to from start to finish. And what a start that is! There’s simply no mistaking the opening song, ‘Eternal Rains Will Come’, for anything other than prog rock (in case you missed what has to be a reference to ELP’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ with the cover), and the rest of the album follows suit. There are guitar solos, synths aplenty, and the whole is overlaid with Mikael Åkerfeldt’s soft, ever-mesmerising vocals.

This isn’t just a pastiche of 70s prog rock, though. The whole album certainly leans in that direction (and there are moments that are pure Argent or Camel), but there are so many complex, intriguing hints here at something greater. There are riffs that could easily have come from one of the band’s earlier albums (the start of ‘Elysian Woes’ strongly hints at ‘Damnation’, for example), yet the two styles mesh perfectly together, forming a coherent sound that’s as compelling as it is intricate.

It’s fair to say that I really love this album. It grows on me every time I listen to it, revealing new subtleties and new layers. If you’ve previously been an Opeth fan, I’d say give it a try: it’s different from their earlier work, certainly, but so much of the complexity I’ve always loved in their music is still here. At its core though, ‘Pale Communion’ is both a tribute to 70s progressive rock and a perfect example of how much life there still is in the genre – and how looking to the past for inspiration isn’t always a step backwards.

Album of the Month: Opeth – ‘Heritage’

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I’m aware that I haven’t actually done an ‘album of the month’ post for a while, so this isn’t really a monthly thing. As September comes to an end though, I wanted to talk about an album that I’ve been waiting for for quite some time: Opeth’s ‘Heritage’.

I’ll make no secret of the fact that I’m a big Opeth fan. I have been for almost as long as I’ve been listening to metal (close to a decade now – wow, how can something make you feel so old when you haven’t even hit 25?!). ‘Heritage’ is their new album, and it’s both a departure from their usual sound and an Opeth album in every way.

Let’s start with the departure aspect. Opeth have always been, primarily, a death metal band with progressive leanings. ‘Heritage’ is very much not a death metal album, but instead something much closer to 60s/70s prog rock. There are echoes of King Crimson, ELP, Camel, Jethro Tull, even the Beatles. There are no death metal vocals, and lots of keyboards/acoustic guitars. In this respect, ‘Heritage’ and it’s accompanying live tours have made a lot of long-term Opeth fans very unhappy. They wanted metal. They got 70’s-style prog rock.

There’s another side to this album though, and one which strikes me as very much Opeth’s traditional sound. There is a strong resemblance in many of the acoustic guitar riffs to those on the band’s only other non-death metal album, ‘Damnation’ (and in fact to acoustic guitar riffs on many of their other albums). The prog elements on ‘Heritage’ may be stronger than before, but they’d already made an appearance on the last two albums, ‘Ghost Reveries’ and ‘Watershed’. ‘Heritage’ is, in many ways, a continuation and expansion of those two albums, but it’s lost the metal elements to achieve that. Whether that’s appealing has more to do with the listener’s attachment to metal, rather than whether or not Opeth have changed their ‘sound’.

It’s not a perfect album, admittedly. Some of the songs, particularly those in the middle of the album, are so complex that they never really have a chance to get going – just when your ear has attuned itself to one melody, that melody is gone and doesn’t reappear in the rest of the song. It could also be argued that ‘Heritage’ is something of a pastiche of 70s prog, although I think there’s enough of Opeth’s signature sound in there to avoid that.

Overall, it’s a very impressive album. ‘The Devil’s Orchard’ and ‘Folklore’ in particular are excellent songs, but it’s listening to the album as a whole, start to finish, that provides the most rewarding experience. Recommended for lovers of prog rock, or for metalheads who are looking for something a bit different.