Ghost Reveries Reviews

OPETH är Sveriges bästa band. Så är det bara. Sedan ”Blackwater Park” (2001) har det varit allmän hysteri kort före OPETH släpper ett nytt album, och efter framgången med de udda tvillingarna ”Deliverance” (2002) och ”Damnation” (2003) så har Micke Åkerfeldt och co sällan haft en lugn stund. Man kan förstå varför. OPETH upphör aldrig att förvåna med sitt mästerliga låtmakeri.

Det går inte att blunda för det faktum att vi har att göra med ren och skär briljans; en konstnärlighet som sträcker sig långt och verkligen tränger sig in i själens mörka vrår. Med denna insikt har jag förstått att det här inte finns mycket utrymme för mitt vanliga revolterande mot popularismen. OPETH förtjänar alla hyllningar och allt glorifierande de kan få.

OPETH har efter alla år som kvartett nu blivit kvintett. Keyboardisten Per Widberg (känd från SPIRITUAL BEGGARS) har fått uppgiften att tillföra lite extra atmosfär i bandets redan vinnande koncept. Det är då främst orgel och mellotronljud vi snackar här, något som kanske inte kommer som en större överraskning för oss som känner till deras influenser.

Många tycker nog inte alls om tanken på en keyboardist i OPETH, men den som lyssnar på ”Ghost Reveries” förstår snart att inget har blivit överdrivet smörigt eller syntetiskt. Snarare har soundet nyanserats och utvidgats. Bara positiva saker har hänt och OPETH är onekligen fortfarande OPETH – ett band att räkna med.

Hur är då nya plattan? Vad har hänt sen sist? Saken är iallafall biff att man tagit saker och ting längre. Det är tyngre, mer experimentellt och psykedeliskt. Soundet känns väldigt musikaliskt, genomarbetat till punkt och pricka med genuin fingertoppskänsla. Man leker mycket med takter, känslor, atmosfärer och nyanser. Åkerfeldts vanliga röst har aldrig känts så snyggt placerad och välljudande tidigare, men jag hade dock velat ha lite mer bas i dödsrosslet. När vi ändå snackar mixning här, så vill jag även passa på att påpeka att jämfört med ”Deliverance” så är ljudbilden på plattan något tunnare, fast det stör föga mycket. Ljudet tuggar skiten ur det mesta som släpps ändå.

I skivans kanske bästa låt, ”The Grand Conjuration” hörs det klart och tydligt vad som hänt sedan sist. Mörkret riktigt sveper över kreationen men lämnar så oerhört mycket kontraster bakom sig ändå. Styrka och kraftfullhet är bara förnamnet. Åkerfeldt har även avslöjat att just den här låten är en satanisk sådan, vilket passar utmärkt. Lika löjligt imponerad blir jag av låten ”Reverie/Harlequin Forest” som har ett mycket snyggt upplägg i kontrasterna mellan hårt och tillbakalutat.

Till skillnad från andra typiska OPETH-plattor så hör man tydligare influenserna från 70-talet här. I en låt som den snyggt semiflummiga ”Atonement” dras tankarna till band som CAMEL, PINK FLOYD och t.o.m. THE DOORS. I låten ”Beneath the Mire” går en orientalisk slinga som bara måste vara inspirerad av THE BEATLES underbara låt, ”Tomorrow Never Knows”. Skivan varvas ganska mycket med de här 70-talsvibbarna mellan de hårdare låtarna.

”Ghost Reveries” är en mycket intressant utgåva och man hittar nya saker vid varje genomlyssning. Den avslutas som pricken över i’t, med den obeskrivligt vackra och stilfulla ”Isolation Years”; en låt som bäst beskriver sig själv. Lyssna och ni kommer sannerligen förstå vad jag menar.

Ni som älskar ”Deliverance” och ”Damnation” lika mycket lär finna en storartad och väldigt balanserad njutning i ”Ghost Reveries”. Själv älskar jag varje minut!

Betyg 9 av 10

Focussed, familiar and still exploring new musical territory

It’s no secret that the completion of 2003’s Damnation (the gentler and mellower sister album to 2002’s Deliverance) took its toll on Opeth’s vocalist/guitarist Mikael Åkerfeldt. The pressure to deliver not one, but distinctly two different sounding albums was not only at a price paid on personal level to Åkerfeldt (Both creatively and mentally), but also at cost to some fans who felt the division between both album’s sounds split and separated the bands unique style from one extreme to the next, not to mention some who thought Deliverance itself was a little too formularised compared to past Opeth efforts.

With the troubles of the past now firmly behind them, Opeth (now a quintet with the addition of Spiritual Beggars keyboardist Per Wiberg (who has played in the band since the release of Damnation) joining Åkerfeldt, guitarist Peter Lindgren, bassist Martin Mendez and drummer Martin Lopez) finally return with a renewed focus on their eighth studio release Ghost Reveries (Their first for Roadrunner Records after their previous label Music For Nations folded). Anyone’s who’s familiar with the Swedish progressive death metal act’s past work won’t be anticipating a great musical departure from what they’re mastered in the past, but having said that, there’s a few new surprises throughout their latest effort.

Starting things off in classic Opeth fashion, Ghost Of Perdition touches upon all the band’s unique traits with the first minute an imposing wall of straight out death metal, before breaking down to allow Åkerfeldt interjecting the first of many clean (And far more expressive) vocal passages. Lopez’s performance is well up front and Tool like in places, while Wiberg’s presence is really felt around the three quarter mark amongst the short acoustic tail end section. If the opening track was the sound of Opeth playing to fans’ expectations, then The Baying Of The Hounds is clearly an attempt to broaden the bands repertoire with greater experimentation. Wiberg’s lush organ sounds (Not unlike Spiritual Beggars) are immediate and upfront, while the riffing is very different from Opeth’s usual style too. The song moves in between both death and mellow passages, with Åkerfeldt delivering some of his best clean vocal performances to date.

Åkerfeldt’s desire to try out new ideas continues well into Beneath The Mire with the song incorporating some Eastern tones within Wilberg’s keyboards. And while there’s still plenty of Opeth’s old melodic death metal in places, it’s actually the atmospheric moments that break things up that are the most interesting characteristics of the song, with subtle flourishes of blues and hints of jazz working it’s way throughout. The predominantly instrumental dream like feel of Atonement takes the Eastern themes of it’s predecessor one step further, and could have easily been lifted from Damnation, while Reverie/Harlequin Forest (One of the albums real stand outs) represents the more traditional side of the band with the mix of lengthy progressive atmospherics, death metal and plenty of Åkerfeldt’s majestic clean vocals.

Hours Of Wealth is by far the most stripped back track Opeth have ever attempted before, with only keyboards and a blues influenced guitar accompanying Åkerfeldt’s vulnerable emotion laden vocals, while The Grand Conjuration returns to familiar Opeth sounds with a relentless assault that exudes pure progressive black metal, which only subsides in a few places before revering back to it’s heavier starting point. The final (and shortest) song, Isolation Years (much like Atonement), is another track with a very sombre Damnation feel to it, and ends things out in a reflective and somewhat calmer manner.

In some ways, Ghost Reveries sounds very much like the Opeth albums of the past, but at the same time there’s a lot of new ideas and elements drifting throughout every song too. To their credit, Opeth have managed to reinvent themselves and evolve once again (without losing their identity one bit), and released yet another adventurous and remarkable release, and one that won’t disappoint even the most ardent follower.

Yikes - backward baseball caps, enormous trousers, two-note detuned riffs and rapping? Shit, trendy label Roadrunner must have ruined Opeth. Suckers. No, obviously Opeth haven't changed a bit on their new label, and why many internet dimwits even bothered to verbalise the naïve idea that a record label would want to completely change a band's sound immediately after signing them only reflects the increasing scarcity of quality cynicism around these days.

This being no less than Opeth's eighth album of creative prog metal, it's probably more correct and meaningful to compare their career arc to those of the '60s and '70s bands they so deeply and rightly admire than the usual flash-in-the-pan three-album, five-year metal band life cycle. So is 'Ghost Reveries' Opeth's 'In Through The Out Door'? Far from it, even if the addition of new member Per Wilberg has brought, as with Zeppelin's slightly flat experimental album, a new keyboard dimension. But Zeppelin's tentative flirtings with a then-emergent technology don't compare to the bold, stark synth grandiosity Opeth have employed throughout their latest record imagine the prodigious, sweeping lines of King Crimson-era Ian McDonald rather than Zep's slightly wimpy 'All My Love'. 'Ghost Reveries' is, though, structured like Led Zeppelin's later albums opening track 'Ghost Of Perdition' announces business as (almost) usual, with several riffs sounding dangerously over-familiar even on the first listen, but as the album progresses Opeth allow themselves to open up and reveal a wealth of novel ideas. 'Beneath The Mire' and 'Atonement' aren't quite Opeth's 'Kashmir', but their sitar-like twanging, Eastern violins and exotic percussion, offset by muscular riffing, seem to suggest a shared inspirational wellspring. 'Hours Of Wealth' hints at Crimson's 'I Talk To The Wind', with it's sleepy flutes and barely-there arrangement, and, in featuring Mikael Åkerfeldt's plaintive vocals almost unaccompanied, harks back to the popular 'To Bid You Farewell' from what now seems like Opeth's ancient second album, 'Morningrise'. So, Opeth have done the sprawling double album (well, sort of, since 'Deliverance' and 'Damnation' were originally conceived as a single piece), the sub-continental themes and the relative keyboard wig-out. The only box left to tick on the checklist of duties for a grandmaster rock band is to get completely fucked on drink and drugs and record a stinking duffer like Sabbath's 'Never Say Die!'. Thankfully, on the evidence of 'Ghost Reveries', Opeth have learned all the right lessons from their forebears.

9.5/10

Review by James 'Harry' Hinchliffe

Not only is this a good album, it is very possibly one the great albums of this decade and certainly one of the defining moments of European metal.

Ghost Reveries is an album that Opeth's founder and frontman Mikael Åkerfeldt has been working towards for more than a decade: a grand unification of death metal, early-70s prog and late-70s psychedelia that is not so much a hybrid as something completely new.

Clocking in at just over an hour, it picks up from where their gentler, Mellontron-soaked 2003 album Damnation left off, but was an attempt to make an album that could conceivably have been released on the Vertigo label circa 1971 an excellent record-a class pastiche-that had the faint whiff of patchouli oil and a slightly damp Afghan coat about it.

In Ghost Reveries, like Tool and The Mars Volta Opeth use these same prog influences to construct something unique and timeless. Unlike those bands, Opeth don't depend on your love of technical complexity. The songs are complex, but so tightly structured that they don't become dull of repetitive or go shooting over the head of even the highest of prog highbrows. They typically last for 10 minute-which is sufficient for Åkerfeldt to ram in as many ideas as lesser bands manage over a whole album-yet still retain a distinctive folky and even a strong pop sensibility like Genisis and the Pink Floyd, they teeter along on the boarder of easy listening without ever plunging into Moody Blues territory. It's still a demanding album, because it works better as a whole than with each individual song in isolation.

There are highlights, of course like the Tomorrow Never Know-meets-Kashmir acid flashback Attonement, the vast, icy, quasi-medieval Harlequin Forrest (and isn't one of the greatest prog titles ever?), or the King Crimson-meets-Obituary that is the climax of The Grand Conjuration.

For you to make the hallucinatory journey into the dark heart if Scandinavian forests, Ghost Reveries need your full attention an hour of your time, and preferably the best stereo that you can beg, borrow or steal to play it on peacock chair and Roger Dean posters on the wall are optional.

- 8/10

Review by Tommy Udo

THERE WAS always something special about Opeth. An ambitious, progressive and determinedly unfashionable alternative to the Stockholm death metal scene that spawned them, they have evolved into one of the few bands on the planet who can truly be considered unique. Like their only obvious peers, Tool and The Mars Volta, Opeth make music that manages to be both serious-minded art and impossibly exciting rock'n'roll.

Ultimately, the point of 'Ghost Reveries' is the creation and conveyance of music itself. And it shows, right from the opening seconds of kick-off epic 'Ghost Of Perdition'. Erupting like a electrical storm in Hell, the first two minutes are all death metal thunder and overpowering intricacy. Then, as it ever was with Opeth, everything changes and the song breaks down to sublime acoustic guitar and Åkerfeldt's graceful, breathy tones, as exquisite harmonies spiral upwards into the ether. A few moments later and everything changes again, as a glorious, reverb-drenched guitar solo sends the song's mellow instincts down another barbaric dark alley as kick drums batter and loose-limbed, diamond-hard riffs swirl and stab. It's baffling, utterly hypnotic and quite, quite brilliant. And we're only halfway through the first track. Jesus. There is so much to relish and cherish on 'Ghost Reveries' that, as a reviewer, it's hard to know where to shine a spotlight. But, for starters, the spectre of Uriah Heep imbues 'The Baying Of The Hounds' with a gargantuan, swaggering '70s rock groove a direct but wildly imaginative steal from The Beatles' 'Tomorrow Never Knows' underpins the fragile, blissed out 'Atonement' and there's lashings of the effortless marrying of beauty and beastliness that has typified much of Opeth's work the plaintive frailties of 'Hours Of Wealth' and the closing 'Isolation Years' outstrip anything on Opeth's 2003 "non-metal" album 'Damnation', while the evil, cyclonic psychedelia of 'The Grand Conjuration' is simply the most destructive thing the band have recorded. It comes as no surprise that 'Ghost Reveries' is the best album that anyone will produce this year, since Opeth have made a habit of aiming for perfection and hitting the bull's-eye. But even in a year that has already produced a great number of timeless metal records, this is simply too awe-inspiring for the competition to handle, custom-built to amaze and delight 20 years from now the very definition of a classic album. Best band on the planet? Best album ever? A resounding 'yes' to both.

KKKKK

Review by Dom Lawson

In the first 10 and a half minutes of Opeth's stunning new album, the Swedish quartet achieve more than most bands could ever dream of in an entire career, and it's all within the confines of one song. 'Ghost Of Perdition' is arguably the most accomplished song to open a metal record in decades. This entire album encompasses so many moods and yet retains a sharp cohesiveness, as Opeth take you on a mighty musical adventure. And it's a roller-coaster ride of some of the most atmospheric songs you'll ever hear. Dark, light, shade, at times ethereal, the most evil, brutal riffs of one minute and exquisite beauty the next. By the time you reach closers 'The Grand Conjuration' and 'Isolation Years' it becomes apparent that your life has been changed forever. Compelling would be a total understatement. 9/10

Review by Darren Sadler