HERITAGE

"Heritage" is a 10 track album by the Swedish death metal band Opeth, that starts a new era for the band. Even though the album seemed a lot of times as a really bad one (at least for the criticizers) , it is still one of the best selling prog albums. The album starts with a beautiful melancholic yet very delighted piano piece, it has a very interesting style which we never heard before from Opeth or from any band at all.

The new album of Opeth is a new gate for a new world, The fantastic new Opeth. even though the band is considered as a Death Metal band, they have reached a decision to make a new album with the music that Mikael Akerfeldt , the band vocalist listened to as a teenager, 70's progressive rock, bands like King Crimson,Genesis and more have built the base of the musical taste of Mikael the young. The delicate, noble and the difficult to understand sound of the prog in the 1970's was exquisite, even though it was not suited for everybody, and because of that it was never really popular.

The album Heritage that was produced on 2011 is one of the most qualitative and best prog albums that I had the pleasure to listen to in my life. Even though the album had been criticized a lot, the new album of Opeth still was a great success in the prog world. I think that it was mentioned negatively a lot of times because of its mellow, soft yet complicated sound, a jazzy yet progressive sound that reminds me a lot of King Crimson.

I think that most of the people just cannot understand the emotion that Mikael Akerfeldt tried to express while writing the songs for this album. Even though there are some pieces in this album that tend more to the 70's hard rock like "Silther" with very simple riffs that are played again and again along with some clean and soft, yet hoarse and agressive vocal of Mikael the vocalist, that almost always expressed himself by brutal music with unique, high quality growling vocal, but, this time Mikael decided to try something different, what he always wanted and started writing an progressive jazz-rock album that includes some really complex, heavy and well though riffs and other melodies.

It is impossible to mention the album without noting the artwork which can be found on the album cover. The artwork wraps you in a 70's prog-like feeling, that is probably exactly what the designer of this artwork tried to express when he drew it. The artwork mentions, in my opinion at least, some kind of a runaway of the group from the hell ( the demon that is found underground ) to something more gentle that can express itself as The tree of knowledge too, something fantastic that can lead to some very bad situations, Opeth lost a lot of fans because of the album, they have also gained a few new fans (as myself ) but they tried a new more gentle sound, and I love it.

As one of the few albums that really made me excited, I started listening to it on the strength of the artwork and my first song was "Famine" I give the album an overall score of: 93/100