Week 18 of 52 albums in a year
Opeth - The Last Will And Testament.
Hi everyone.
This week it might not be a surprise to anyone who read last weeks entry that I've spent this week listening to a new album from one of my favourite bands. This week it was Opeth - The Last Will And Testament.
I guess it's only fair to give you some background on Opeth, because this is a band that I've followed along and enjoyed since about the year 2003, when I got their album Deliverance. They started off as a Swedish death metal band with their albums Orchid and Morningrise but over time they evolved. A lot.
It began with a concept album called My Arms, Your Hearse. This album pushed what the band was. As an example, it has the absolutely brutal song Demon Of the Fall, and the next song is a mellow one called Credence. There’s no gutteral throaty growls, no distorted guitars, it’s a song that you could play to your grandmother. While she might think it’s shit, there’s a higher chance that she would listen to the whole song compared to the one before (unless she’s a metal head herself).
This was to be their new style, melodic death metal, where a song would be a journey all of itself. They followed MAYH with another concept album called Still Life, which had even more of the gentle moments. The death metal became an element of their music rather than the focal point. It was like listening to a dark fairy tale, the music sounded evil, but it wasn’t a wall of noise and monstor voices.
I first heard Opeth on a compilation metal album by Shock records back in 2000 called Route 666 volume 2. Still Life must have just been released so they chose the song Benighted to represent Opeth (because it's the shortest song on the album at 5 minutes while most are around 9 minutes). I thought Opeth were shit. I mean it was a good song, but I almost always skipped it because I wanted to hear metal, not gentle music. Seriously, click on that link and listen to that song just to get an idea of what their music can sound like, and why I was so disappointed at 15.
So I missed the boat when they released what many consider to be their magnum opus, Blackwater Park. This was the album that really introduced the world to Opeth. With some songs clocking in at 10 minutes plus, this is where they really nailed the duality of their music, with production to match. A song would truly be a journey, going from being a pleasant and gentle to full blown death metal and back.
By late 2003, when I really got into Opeth, they had just brought out 2 albums back to back. One was called Damnation and the songs were entirely clean, there were no death metal elements at all, though it was still dark and sad. Deliverance (the one I got) was heavy, with some lighter moments scattered throughout it. This is what drew me to Opeth and why I loved them more than other metal music. The dynamics gave the music more aggression and heaviness, but it was done well. Opeth didn't sound cheesy.
Ghost Reveries came next and while I liked bits of it, I didn't love it like the other albums. I'd find myself skipping songs but the songs I liked, I loved! Their next album, Watershed, was the last album to have any death metal growls in the vocals. It had some fantastic songs on it but it's also where they began to evolve from melodic death metal to prog rock.
The next albums Heritage, Pale Communion, Sorceress, and In Cauda Venenum divided fans. Doing research for this review, I found out this is where people have drawn the line and called Opeth's music oldpeth vs newpeth. Anything from Heritage onwards was labelled 'newpeth'. By this stage Opeth was pretty much a heavy prog rock band, with elements of jazz, psychedelia, folk, and soundscapes. The vocals were sometimes operatic and soaring, totally different to what had drawn me to the band originally. While there was a darkness to the music, it was also scattered and random, from song to song it didn't feel as cohesive to my ears. Sure, there were riffs that were heavy, but they would be softened because you could hear a flute or a synth playing along. It was at interesting sound but very different.
There's good songs on all of these albums, but as their style evolved, I found myself loving the albums as a whole less. Looking through the track listings, I can barely remember many of these songs until I start listening back to them. There’s some great songs on all of them, but do I ever go back and listen to them? No. Is it good music? Yes. If you aren't into the death metal growls but really like heavy prog rock, these albums might be for you instead of their older stuff.
My point is, by the time In Cauda Venenum came out in 2019, I didn't even know about it, or really care. Opeth had fallen off my radar after Sorceress. I don't mind prog rock, but for me, Opeth are a melodic death metal band. Mikael Akerfeldt is my favourite death metal vocalist, and I want to hear those death metal growls when I listen to Opeth. No shade on the band, I love that they went off and explored new territory, it just wasn’t my thing at the time.
Late last year I happened to stumble onto an instagram post about a new Opeth album and how the growls were back! So I was quite excited to hear this album and have had it in the back burner since about October.
So with all that back ground in mind, here's the review.
In a word, this album is fantastic. I fucking love it. Only having a week with this album feels wrong, there's a whole story in here that I'm still uncovering. It's a concept album about the last will and testament of a man with secrets, and each song is like reading out a section of the will, so they are labelled §1, §2 etc. From what I understand, that § symbol means paragraph.
Musically, there's death metal growls, clean singing, operatic singing, spoken word (provided by Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull), and the feel of this album is really cohesive as it traverses all these genres. It's eerie and dark, there's gentle moments scattered throughout it but they all feel like they are leading somewhere.
§1 got me from the start. It's like a soundtrack, listening to footsteps walk up to a door and open it, then the song kicks in. It's got a real groove to it, and it was stuck in my head all week! There's layers of sounds to this song, from the higher pitched vocals with double kick drums, the growls with a synth in the background adding to the intensity, the spoken words repeating the growls, there is a lot happening in this song. There's some gentle moments too where it all stops, but it's still really psychotic, with clocks ticking and string sounds in the background, before kicking into a more prog rock sound. I think it's great hearing the lyrics of the growls repeated with the clean vocals (or drifting tremolo vocals). It makes it easier to understand the lyrics and I'd imagine someone who doesn't listen to death metal might actually 'get' it. It fades out into a gentle almost classical moment, with the sounds of kids laughing, and then like a funeral, people murmuring in a crowd.
§2 blends in with the song before. It's got a really evil feel to it but I quite like it. It kicks into this really jammy, almost blues sound, with Ian Anderson reading passages of the will and testament while Mikael sings. It really brings out the concept of the album and it's why I'd love to get a physical copy of this album because I’ve heard that the lyrics are written up as a will and testament.
§3 sounds technical from the drop, like heavy prog rock. I love it, it's got atmosphere with synths in the background that aren't overwhelming and kicks into a really heavy riff with double kicks and soaring vocals. It's like taking the best elements from the 'newpeth' era, but with more of an emphasis on the metal elements. I mean I don't mind hearing a flute now and then, but it's great to just hear a riff. I don't need to hear the death growls to enjoy Opeth, and there's none on this song.
§4 is initially a prog rock sound, but it's got the heavier vocals in there too. I think it sounds great. There is a touch of psychedelia in it, some spoken word in the backgroud, but all of these sit in the background. Around the 1:45 minute mark, the whole song has broken down to just clean vocals and... maybe a harp? Then it kicks back into a real groove, with a flute jamming away. It slowly evolves into a guitar, the riff gets heavier, and then the brutal vocals are back. There's long moments with just music, but it's the Opeth sound I love. It's heavy, dark, and really captures something evil.
§5 flows on really naturally from the last song, and it sounds like waking up from a dream. No, I'm being serious. It's got a classical music sound that I remember from cartoons during dream sequences. Of course it doesn't last, it just sits in the background as the song grows into something darker. It's still clean, and there's an acoustic guitar playing along, but it kicks it up a notch, leading into full on growls and a really heavy sound. The drums are fantastic, and just keep the whole thing lurching forwards. There's a middle eastern sound throughout it, a synth breakdown, and one of my favourite moments on the album around the 3:35 mark, where a cascade of instruments bring you down before kicking back into that brutal riff again. It gets softer, then heavier, I guess I just love this song. It goes to some really interesting places and has great dynamics.
§6 begins with a slow fade in synth from the last song, and then the drums kick in and the song grows around them. This is another song with a pretty heavy sound to it. It's probably closer to prog rock than metal, with guitar solos and riffs combined with the growls here and there, and the drums just crushing. The song fades out gently over the last minute and a half, with some really nice clean guitar playing over a percussionless atmosphere.
§7 I love the first riff in this song. Palm muted heaviness. It kicks into an eerie gentleness, with Ian Anderson clearly reading out paragraph 7. This goes into a synth which gives the feeling of falling (with this great little drum sound in the back) and kicks into a heavy riff with full blown growls. But only for a moment, then it's smoothly back to prog rock world, and more reading of the last will and testament. That amazing riff from the start makes another appearance, with the full support of the band, before going off in another direction. There's a lot to this song, but by 4:20, there's nothing but church choir vocals. It kicks into a sound that's partly impending doom, partly ethereal epicness (all of it very gentle considering what's come before) that plays out for the last 2 minutes.
A Story Never Told reminds me of the album Damnation. It's a gentle, beautiful song, that is full of sadness and longing. There's no heavy riffs in this, no gutteral vocals or double kicks. Instead there's moments of piano, flute, strings, clean vocals, sparse drums, warm guitars. It's the sort of thing that makes you want to hum along and gets stuck in your head.
All in all, I'd give this 5/5 fingers, a full fisting and one of the most dense albums I've listened to this year. Partly because it covers so much musical ground, but also because it's a concept album, there's a story interwoven among the music and I still don't think I've grasped exactly what happened in the story. And of course, the music is fantastic from start to finish. I don’t feel like there’s a filler song or a boring bit, it is great from start to finish.
If you've read this far and want to hear Mikaels own commentary on each song as the album plays back, I stumbled onto this link! Although I haven't listened to it myself as yet, it's on the to do list.
The year so far: