MY ARMS, YOUR HEARSE

This album is clearly a transition between the old black metal oriented music of "Orchid" and "Morningrise" and the new more diverse music of the later albums. The extreme parts are here much more extreme and the mellow parts even more mellow. The entire album is a concept album with every song ending with lyrics corresponding to the title of the next track (so that the album could be played in loop). It's not a bad album at all, even some of the most heavy songs are good, but there are real brutal moments that are hard to appreciate by non death metal fan.

The album starts with a short "Prologue", a little piano piece, and then verses into "April Ethereal". The first impression with the intro is that it's much more brutal than anything I've heard from Opeth but wait... who the hell is growling here??? The voice of Mikael Åkerfeldt has totally changed here, from basic black metal screams to some kind of low rumbling. This sounds really strange, and such great and powerful track as "April Ethereal" would have really needed much clearer vocals. The song ends with a mellow acoustic part and then comes "When": an awful intro (pure brutal death metal here, reminding of Åkerfeldt's other band - Bloodbath) followed by more mid paced metal with still the extreme growls - the song changes completely after the first half and melodic metal/clean voice take over. "Madrigal" is again a short instrumental which serves as intro to "The Amen Corner" (not the best track on the album). "Demon Of The Fall" is maybe the best of the brutal songs on the album: the music is mid paced and Mikael Akerfeldt indeed growls like he was the devil himself! - then like on "When" the tempo changes and the end of the song is melodic with clean voice. "Credence" is a nice ballad, a good moment to enjoy before the horrible "Karma", where brutality leaves place for more brutality (the song sounds like a draft of what will become the great "Godhead's Lament" on "Still Life"). Fortunately, the album ends with the beautiful instrumental "Epilogue".

Rating: 82/100