STILL LIFE

Giving this album the same rating as Blackwater Park and Ghost Reveries because of the same reasons. It's an essential album, revolutionary in anyway, it's a masterpiece for its genre, therefore it's for 'fans only'. I must say that I like this album more than the two mentioned previously, but the growls once again ruin it.

My favorites are Benighted which is a sweet ballad and Face Of Melinda which is seriously one of the most cute songs I've heard! Damnit Mikael, why can't you do soft vocals all the time? It's much better. The rest of the songs are pretty solid but the growls (which by the way are too loud in the mix) really ruin it. There's songs like The Moor, Godhead's Lament or Moonlapse Vertigo that have some nice acoustic sections though.

So, for hardcore growl fans only, if you don't like growls you WON'T enjoy this album, and the fact that it really is an essential album to its genre makes me give it five stars.