Damnation --- Opeth --- 2003 (Koch)
Yes, I can hear it now: the mocking laughter as you all point and say "Look! He went for the
least metal Opeth album! What a pansy!" Pansy I may be, but I've consistently been advised to check out Opeth and been put off by the death vocals. Here I'm told there are few if any, and the music leans far more towards the progressive metal side of things, so I'm hoping it may be a good choice for me. Sure, I could have chosen "Blackwater Park" or "Heritage", but I didn't, so sue me. The average settlement is ten thousand dollars.
Written at a time when his grandmother died in a car accident, the album is dark and doomy, the first and longest track more even progressive rock than metal, with soft guitar and a very clean vocal, mellotron coming in and even the percussion gentle. Nice Santanesque guitar solo from Peter Lindgren, and that mellotron apparently is played by none other than Porcupine Tree's Stevie Wilson. This could be very good indeed. I really like "Windowpane" and it's a great start to the album, though again I suspect ardent Metalheads and fans of the band will be fuming at my choice. Meh, as Jarvis Cocker once remarked, it had to start somewhere, so it started there.
Great keyboard work and some spooky effects from Wilson, Mikael Akerfeldt's voice very sombre and reserved, and some nice vocal harmonies in the song too. "In my time of need" is slow, brooding ballad with an almost robotic-like vocal in the verse, introspective guitar and some solid keyboard from the Porcupine Tree man. There's almost an acoustic backing to "Death whispered a lullaby", with a harder edge breaking through from time to time, pehaps showing echoes of Opeth's roots. An interesting kind of dual vocal then to "Closure", with a powerful and dramatic instrumental in the second minute, taking us right into a sudden stop, acoustic guitar and the resumption of the vocal, quiet and gentle. The guitar from Lindgren then goes all sort of eastern, bringing the song to its conclusion.
More soft acoustic guitar greets us as "Hope leaves" opens with a sort of metallic, mono vocal (not like the robotic one of "In my time of need"; that referred more to the phrasing, the way it was sung than the actual voice used), the settles down into another low-key, mid-paced song, while the way "To rid the disease" opens puts me in mind of Floyd's "Nobody home", and again the keyboards play a significant role in creating the soundscape here. There's quite an ominous sound to them, and then in about the third minute Lindgren kicks in with an emotional guitar solo that gives way to single piano from Wilson before the percussion joins in and full keyboard pushes its way to the fore.
A really nice, again quite Santana-influenced guitar instrumental before we end on "Weakness", a bleak, stark little tune seemingly driven on mellotron and guitar, very progressive as has been this whole album. Hardly anything to rock out to but a whole lot to listen to. Very impressed, and surprised.
TRACKLISTING
1. Windowpane
2. In my time of need
3. Death whispered a lullaby
4. Closure
5. Hope leaves
6. To rid the disease
7. Ending credits
8. Weakness
Yes, I know: this is not metal. Well, it is, Jim, but not as we know it. Opeth have for a long long time been associated in my mind with screaming vocals stopping me investigating what I had been told was really good progressive/death metal. Having heard this album, I'd say I'm well ready to go further, but I must bear in mind that most of the rest of their discography is probably unlikely to be like this. In fact, much of it may not be to my taste. I'll find out I guess when I start listening to their other albums.
Well at least I can say with certainty that I like one of Opeth's works, and who knows, maybe I'll enjoy some of their other album, though the chances are that for that to work it will more than likely be the more recent stuff, as it seems they only really started to soften their approach in the last decade or so. For all I know, they could have gone back to the style of their earlier albums.
Apologies then for this slight deviation off course on our journey through heavy metal and its many associated sub-genres. We hope you enjoyed it nevertheless, and without further ado we return you to your regular programming schedule.
Read more here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opeth