GHOST REVERIES

This is the first extreme metal album I listened to and it was really like a smash in my head! Before that my only approaches of heavy stuff had been with bands like Mr. Bungle or Naked City, bands who have some metal influences. Opeth delivers an album of an incredible and fascinating alchemy. One of the strengths of the band is to have reinvented itself with each new release. On Ghost Reveries they develop their style in a particularly true prog metal direction and they create the perfect symbiosis between these two genres. This album is perhaps less aggressive than others like Blackwater Park or Deliverance but more melodic than ever. Indeed Opeth adds new atmospheres and pictures to its poetic painting: Ghost Reveries makes us enter in manors haunted by ghosts and memories... step into paths lost in dark and foggy woods... It's also the first time Opeth has its own keyboard player: the honourable Per Wiberg. In general I think the keyboards in prog metal have a tendency to be ugly (without being disturbing), yet here they instantly find their place and... how heavy they are! The Hammond of Baying of The Hounds or the Mellotron of Beaneath The Mire testify it. There's even a psychedelic song, named Atonement, with Eastern heady sounds, that is as original as well integrated on a death metal album. Akerfeldt's singing is full of emotions, magnificent, very efficient in both clear voice and growl. Opeth proves again its great wealth and its undeniable quality of composition (tortuous riffs, complex structures, inventive bridges, consistency of the whole album,...). So I think Ghost Reveries is essential to each and every progger, especially if metal is a bit foreign to you.