ORCHID

The first Opeth album is a mix of very long songs and short instrumentals. No mellow tracks or ballads here. The voice of Mikael Akerfeldt is pure black metal with some clean/whispering passages. But instead of the fast paced repetitive music characteristic of black metal, the music here is mid paced (not slow, it is not doom metal either) with a lot (and I mean a lot) of mood changes: distorted guitar, acoustic guitar, solos, duos, metallish, folkish...

This first track, "In The Mist She Was Standing", is very characteristic of early Opeth: very long passages without any vocals (in particular the intro - really catchy) and then the black metal growls... I'm not at all favorable to this type of vocals on such music, it kinda doesn't fit well and spoil the atmosphere a bit. "Under The Weeping Moon" is ok, but not great. "Silhouette" is pure classic music: this is not Mozart, but this little piano piece is really well executed. "Forest Of October" is one of the two songs ever written by the band as Opeth and one of my favorites from early Opeth: the acoustic parts here really fit well and the extreme vocals are ok on the heavier and faster parts (songs like this made people call Opeth's music "forest metal", because many songs talk about forests...). "The Twilight Is My Robe" shows again a mix of mellow and heavy parts, with extreme vocals on the slow parts (too bad, with clean vocals it would have been a really good song). "Requiem" is a short acoustic instrumental which continues on "The Apostle In Triumph": very apostolic music indeed (nice intro by the way), with even french folk music influences (which will later appear again on "Black Rose Immortal").

Rating: 89/100

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