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Review:
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Fame can be both boon and bane. And in the recent past, it
has served as the latter to a good majority of metal bands
that all of a sudden want to cash in on their success. And
for a band like Opeth, success could have easily gotten
to their heads. So did they fall prey to it? ***
Most definitely not. Despite all the murmurs
about the line-up changes and how it could be the path to
perdition for the band, Opeth have snubbed all nay-sayers
with possibly their darkest and most epic album till date,
Watershed. Watershed sees the debut of Fredrik Akesson (guitars)
replacing Peter Lingdren, and Mikael Akerfeldt's Bloodbath
partner Martin Axenrot replacing Martin Lopez on drums.
The album opens with the quintessential ballad 'Coil' that
soon gives way to the blazing 'Heir Apparent'. The glaring
aspect of this song is the way Opeth have used modern style
pinches and fast riffing and fused that into their already
trademark blues and jazz inspired songwriting. And the sheer
speed of the song at times takes you by the neck. Add to
that the dark, almost black metal-like aura and you pretty
much realize how versatile Mikael Akerfeldt is with songwriting.
The song that takes the award though, is 'The Lotus Eater'.
Starting with a VERY deceptive happy tune hummed by Akerfeldt
the song suddenly becomes this blazing inferno of blast
beats. YES, blast beats! Blast beats with Akerfeldt singing
clean. The next track 'Burden' is another ballad which ends
with an acoustic riff being played while the guitar is continually
tuning down. That is precisely what is so special about
this album, the innovation. It seems Mikael Akerfeldt has
drawn inspiration from all those various genres he likes,
including a greater inspiration from death metal. ***
When listening to this album, I would
recommend not expecting ANYTHING at all. This album is NOTHING
like the Opeth one heard on 'Damnation' or 'My Arms,Your
Hearse'. Even the song lengths don't make you go 'Oh could
you get it over with already'. This album is full of surprises
in terms of scale and time signature changes, and is also
much catchier than previous albums. And the number of vocal
hooks on this album is phenomenal. Akerfeldt has even managed
death growl hooks, and not just cookie monster drones. Drummer
Martin Axenrot also brings some death metal influences to
this album, like the aforementioned blast beats and an increased
number of cymbal crashes (especially the China). The fretwork
on this one also has a heightened death/thrash metal influence
what with the pinches and the furious tremolo picking. Of
course, the jazz and blues aspect stays and while the album
has an evident extreme twist to it, bass player Martin Mendez
provides the 'yang' to the 'furious ying' with a innovative
jazz-inspired style of playing. ***
My advice to those who were worried about
the line-up changes: the line-up has changed so that the
music gets BETTER. And to those who were Opeth fans from
the start, there is no reason to stop worshipping the band.
To everyone else, you WANT this album.
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