ORCHID

Opeth's first album and one that calls into question the notion of whether the performer's age is relevant to a record's merits. If a group of 35 year olds produced this record I would be fairly ho-hum about it, but if you factor in that the group were around 21, the performance and composition of songs like In Mist She Was Standing- the album's best track- becomes a lot more impressive and moves me to be charitable. Amidst the standard Scandanavian death metal that will drive a lot of prog fans away, Orchid features a lot of interesting moments (love that long dark section on Under The Weeping Moon where the drums drop out) and the use of piano, acoustic guitar and atmosphere suggests a precocious group with plenty of talent who don't quite know how to use it yet. I hesitate to call this a straight death metal album because there is certainly a sense that the group have "big ideas" that their chosen genre can't quite hold, even here on the very beginning. The raw materials for Opeth's eventual domination of prog-metal are certainly here, but the songs lack personality and character, something that would be solved immediately on the next album as Akerfeldt began to write with topics in mind which would give the songs a purpose and make the compositions come alive- he has admitted that many of these are about nothing and it shows. You could mix and match sections from different tracks without changing the flow of the album. That is not to write it off though because there is plenty of stuff here that can be enjoyed in an uncomplicated way for its cool, hard, rocking sound, but it lacks the dazzling musicianship, emotional pull or memorability that later Opeth records would possess. These songs bleed into each other after a while and cheap production doesn't help. Additionally, Akerfeldt's voice is notably higher (again, he's only 21) and isn't yet earning the "best growl in metal" accolade he's routinely given these days. He's also fairly unintelligble here, where on later records he gets a better handle on growling and enunciating at the same time. However, Orchid is one of those debuts that will forever be rated lowest of all their work because if one gives this four stars, then everything else they've ever recorded becomes five stars because it is all significantly better. Some say that's wrong, that you should review an album based on its own merits and not in light of what happened earler or afterwards, but I find this unrealistic because we cannot help but view things in context, whatever the situation. Three stars for Orchid then but in a way it's a compliment to the level of excellence the band maintains throughout their discog that their debut has to be scaled down to make room for emphasising the excellence of their other material.