Opeth - Still Life

After the groundbreaking (and I don’t use the term lightly) My Arms, Your Hearse, Opeth returned a year later with new bassist Martin Mendez, and a new album: Still Life. Their fourth album is an interesting one in that I don't see it as a full progression… more of a side-step. That's not to say it's bad, it just happens to be sandwiched between two superior albums. Now many of the Opeth fanbase list this as their favorite, but I've always thought there was a bit of a hipster street-cred to favoring the album BEFORE the one that the majority tout as the band’s finest hour.

The issue with Still Life is difficult to pinpoint. In many ways, it feels like more of a logical progression from Morningrise, while My Arms, Your Hearse is a more believable precursor to Blackwater Park. Part of the reason is the somewhat softer feel of Still Life. The urgency of the Hearse album is missing and the slower, methodical approach of Morningrise has returned. The guitars have lost their bite, the drums, their punch. "The Moor" takes about 5 minutes before it really kicks in, and even then, it tends to wander - an interesting pick for an opening track. "Benighted" and "Face of Melinda" are beloved, but neither of them can hold a candle to Hearse's "Credence," or Park's "Harvest." Akerfeldt's voice in the aforementioned tracks has an annoying whispery quality to it which I don't quite understand, or really enjoy.

Still Life is not without it's strongpoints. The move from complex arrangement to complex riffs begins here. That is to say, long phrases within riffs - some as long as 8 measures at times. So an 8 measure polyphonic phrase with countermelody within the guitar work is a thick soup, and for progressive metal fans, it is delicious stuff. In my mind, the album's centerpiece, and still one of my favorite tracks from the band, is "Godhead's Lament." Within the context of this work, it is lightning in a bottle - beautiful melodies, kickass riffs, growls and perhaps Mikael's most impassioned clean-vocal performance to this point.

A real notable step forward is Akerfeldt's death growl - it is absolutely beastly on this record, stronger than ever before. At times, almost a stark contrast to the somewhat mellow riffage beneath it. "Serenity Painted Death" is the other standout here, but even its most sinister riffs lack the bite they would've had on the last effort's production. "White Cluster" is a bit piecemeal, but I do rather enjoy the fractured jam through the last half of it.

Maybe it bears mentioning that this album was my official introduction to the band, but I’m not sure that has a major impact on my view of it now. Still Life is an important step in the bands development, but it actually feels more experimental than its predecessor while being less of a drastic step in a new direction. Their composition skills drop a notch as they explore how far they can stretch their sound in this new direction. Their finest lineup is now set - like Megadeath on Rust in Peace, or Death on Human, these four guys have a unique chemistry and each member fills his roll better than anyone before or after him in this band. Bring on the Park.

Opeth - My Arms, Your Hearse

  

The two years since Morningrise were quite impactful to this band. Gaining a much needed new drummer Martin Lopez, Akerfeldt decides to take over bass duties as well and we plunge deep into a new phase of the band.

After a brief intro, the opening moments of “April Ethereal” show the band clearly has changed their approach to the heavy riff. They discovered they can do so much more with two guitars than just having one mimic the other on a 3rd or 5th interval, but there are things like countermelodies and chord interplay. The band had matured impressively on here. Rhythmically speaking, they are a completely different band - no longer content to plod forward with that swingy 6/8 double bass riff, things start getting very interesting. “April Ethereal” announces the changes riff-after-riff with full-6 string chords and broken rhythms (check out that “pre-Deliverence” breakdown at the 6 minute mark).

The production has doubled in quality giving Lopez a punch in the kick drum that the band sorely needed. It gives a heaviness to the new direction in stark contrast to the murky, Black Metal-esque sound to the first two records.

Akerfeldt’s growl also has a new intensity to it - suddenly developing its own character rather than blending in with the legions of Swedish growlers before him. The true marvel here though, is how he now sings with such confidence. Nowhere is this demonstrated more than on the downright beautiful “Credence” which clocks in at a mere 5:26. What the hell is going on? Manageable song-lengths? It’s barely the same band. Though, if we’re honest, “Prologue,” “April Ethereal,” and “When” could all be one track (and on record it sounds like one) and “Madrigal” is merely the intro to “The Amen Corner,” so maybe that length change is more of an illusion. Regardless, the album has an urgency to it, which is all the more pronounced when compared to the slow and brooding style of Morningrise.

MAYH is probably best known as the album with crowd favorite (it’s STILL on their set list), “Demon of the Fall.” It is a special track with some of Opeth’s heaviest moments in it, particularly that breakdown with the title growled over and over (one of the rare moments when they sound like a straight forward death metal band). That second riff too - so much cool guitar-interplay going on there.  “April Ethereal,” (which is my personal favorite) “When,” and “The Amen Corner” are all just as strong in my opinion, only “Karma” sounds pieced together but even then - it’s decent. This is the first essential album in their catalogue - they are playing and writing at a very special level here. The truly remarkable part though; this isn’t even their peak.

As a bonus, there are two somewhat surprisingly  faithful cover songs on the re-release: Celtic Frost’s “Circle of the Tyrants,” and the Maiden classic, “Remember Tomorrow.”

Opeth - Morningrise

Opeth Morningrise

Opeth’s Sophomore effort came a short year after the debut and sports the same lineup and a similar production. I believe the fan base is split on this record - feeling it is maybe too similar to its predecessor, but for only 13 months, the band made some huge leaps forward.

Morningrise is instantly “softer” than Orchid, not only slowing the tempos, but being more comfortable with long passages of clean guitar. The album’s closer “To Bid You Farewell,” even has only clean vocals on it - the first time Opeth tried such a thing. So while we are on that subject, Akerfeldt has made some audible improvements in that area, though he still sounds like a growler trying to sing, and not a singer who can also growl (which he would eventually become). His weakest point on this album in that regard is the overly long-winded “Black Rose Immortal” which loses focus once it goes soft around the 4:30 mark.

The drums are still lacking in my opinion, but they are less distracting compared to the debut. There is less of a commitment to the blind double-bass for double-bass-sake. The true focus of the music is still very much on Akerfeldt and Lindgren’s guitar work.

But let’s discuss the true strength of this album: the band has figured out how to compose a 10+ minute song and have it feel like a song and not simply a collection of cool riffs. “The Night and the Silent Water” (written as a tribute to Akerfeldt’s recently departed grandfather) is most demonstrative of this - transitioning from one elegant passage to the next, even mastering a smooth transition to clean tone around the 2:45 mark. “Nectar” is the other favorite track here, and again, for riffing and great transitions. 

A retrospective review like this is tough, because I know the massive change in lineup and overall approach which is about to come, but for some reason - I’ve never been impatient with Morningrise. I’ve always found it slow and methodical, with on-the-money riffs throughout the proceedings. It's never in a hurry, but it is seldom confused on where it is headed. Where Orchid seems to meander at times, only “Black Rose Immortal” is guilty of that here, everything else feels directed and focused. Even the mellow album closer is a delight - hinting at the ground they would explore fully on the Damnation record. 

If the record is overlooked, I believe it’s because it is noticeably less metal than Orchid while still sounding the most like it. After this one, the pregame phase is over, and the true Opeth begin to take form.

Opeth - Orchid

Opeth - Orchid (1995)

It certainly is bizarre to go back through Opeth's catalogue - now that it stretches 2 and half decades. Giving Orchid a spin requires one to remove themselves from all the proceeding albums, and attempt to listen to it as the debut it was - an impossible task.

Orchid is definitely Opeth's "most metal" album in that it follows all the tropes present in metal in 1995. That being said, it is hugely ambitious for its time period - competing with forward-thinking Swedes Edge of Sanity and certainly At the Gates.

But the emphasis on the "metal" thing comes from even the softer passages - rooted firmly in what was established as acceptable "soft" metal passages (read: classical guitar style finger-picking). Some circles refer to Orchid as a Blackened-Death metal record, and there are a few reasons for this connection. First-and-foremost, the song titles and cover art: hardly typical of the Swedish Death Metal scene, with titles almost plagiarizing their Norwegian counterparts: "Under the Weeping Moon," The Twilight is my Robe…" the band has a dark theme going on here. The other piece is the decidedly melancholic tone of the dual guitar harmonies which are really the bands go-to in terms of the heavier passages - immediately demonstrated on both "In the Mist She Was Standing," and the dark brooding opening three or so minutes of "Forest of October." The third black metal quality is a rather thin production with heavy use of reverb. Some of this was style choice, the other, was definitely budget limitations.

No matter what black metal elements are present here, there is no doubt in my mind that Opeth were a Swedish death metal band, growing up worshiping local heroes like Entombed, Unleashed, and Dismember. They clearly entered the scene with intentions of stretching the  genre as far as it would go - something no one can argue they eventually did.

But that brings us to Orchid. So it took over 10 straight listens to wash most of the modern Opeth outta my ears so that I could give this sucker a clean listen. Like most overly-ambitious progressive bands (metal or otherwise), in their early years they have all the key elements except one. They have musicianship, they have talent, and they have the ability to come up with amazing riffs and sequences. The lacking element is composition, and while Orchid does not completely lack in this department, it does fall into that feeling of a big collection of good ideas rather than a cohesive song at times. Most of the uninitiated will admit telling the songs apart is difficult, mainly because you have only 7 tracks. Take the ambitious piano instrumental "Silhouette" and the short interlude "Requiem" out of the mix, then you are left with 5 songs that range from 10 to 14 minutes and each one of them goes through a large number of shifts in tone, tempo, and direction. It also doesn't help that many of the songs are through-composed (meaning they do not return to previously played sections - they play it once and move on). From a writer's perspective - that's a giant undertaking, to a listener, it can be overwhelming.

This means that Orchid is best enjoyed as a start-to-finish listen, taking in all the elements as one goes and enjoying the evolutions. Through my repeated listens, it grew on me more and more. My nitpicks are the production (sometimes the clean guitar tone carries a punchier low-end than the distortion which means the switch does not accomplish what it should). The other would be Anders Nordin's obvious limitations (with the exception of his incredible piano playing). I'm not a drummer myself, but it is obvious they asked a lot of him, and he delivers most of it rather timidly and unconvincingly. It is competent enough I suppose, but he is clearly the band's weakest link here. The double bass seems to be the choice when he can't think of anything else and the creativity lacks severely.

Akerfeldt had not yet mastered his vocals yet either. The grunt is sufficient, but man-oh-man did he ever get better at that - part of the lacking could be the production. His clean vocals are the real sore point here - they are shaky, unconfident, and rather bland. This is where it is almost impossible to erase the memory of how good they are now.

It is difficult to pick out a favorite track because, as mentioned above - they are all so long and contain so many transitions. So I will go with "Under the Weeping Moon" as it contains of one the coolest parts - an eerie repeat triplet pattern on clean guitar underneath drum hits and feedback that lulls the listener to sleep right before it explodes again into the death metal proper.

Opeth's debut is damn fine. I believe it will appeal to most fans of 90's Swedish DM, and I think most Opeth die-hards still defend it (though I doubt the majority of their modern fan base have even broken it out of its plastic). If it has been a while for you (as it was for me), give it a spin, you'll dig it again.