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.