Opeth — Blackwater Park

Opeth doesn't play a lot live, but if they do then it's a great show. I saw them in october on Prog Power and it was one of the best shows I ever saw. The whole band were a bit static on stage, but they played very good and a lot too. They actually played one track from 'Blackwater Park'. It was the track 'The Drapery Falls' and it made me hungry for more new material.

Now it's here, 'Blackwater Park', the fifth Opeth album, it contains 8 songs and has almost 70 minutes of music on it. The album is a continuation of 'Still Life', their previous record, so don't expect sudden changes in style or compositions, Opeth are just improving what they do best, playing death metal with 70's prog influences. The whole album is a bit more brutal then 'Still Life', which even had some jazz influences. So I think you can place 'Blackwater Park' between 'My Arms Your Hearse' and 'Still Life'. It has both the brutal- and beautiful parts. For instance 'Harvest' is an acoustic song with beautiful clean vocals and a sing-a-long refrain, it became one of my favourite Opeth tracks since I first heard it.

The album starts with 'The Leper Affinity', a brutal ten minute track with minimal clean vocals. Still it must be one of the best tracks on the album. The grunts are deep and they are done very well, Mikeal also put more attention in the clean vocal department since it all sounds a little bit better then before. Second track 'Bleak' is a bit like 'The Leper Affinity', but has more clean vocals and some ground-breaking riffs. 'The Drapery Falls', the preview track from the concert, this one start with a cool prog part and then ends after 11 minutes with some deep grunts and great riffs. After this track I have a problem. The rest of the album is still pretty good, but I hoped for more. Some of the songs tend to bore me a bit. They go one ear in and the other out. Still, the quality of the tracks is good, but if they tried to make some of the songs shorter it would've worked better for me. Still 'The Funeral Portrait' is a great song in the best Opeth tradition with even some small trash influences.

The production is done very well, great guitar, drum and bass sound. It's all pretty clear that Opeth put's a lot of time in a good production. So overall I like this album, but it's not my favourite Opeth album. Ofcourse every fan should get 'Blackwater Park' and this is still better then most metal-releases nowadays.