HERITAGE

It seems Opeth tries hard to convince people like me, who love 70's prog, to get at least one of their albums. Even at the risk of annoying old Opeth fans. It seems they reached their goal. 'Heritage' is the second album out of ten, which does not sound metal-ish and does not contain any growls at all. While the first one 'Damnation' sounds more like another Steven Wilson project (Porcupine Tree, Blackfield), this latest album is more like a homage to classic prog rock of the 70's.

The first song 'Heritage', an instrumental, has the character of an intro and starts with mellow romantic piano tunes. Later the piano is joined by a jazzy type of bass. When you hear it you immediately forget that Opeth was originally a death metal band. Then the second song starts quite heavy in the sense of King Crimson's '21st Century Schizoid Man' or early Genesis. And it continues in the same atmosphere. The well played acoustical guitars, the mellotron sounds, the few electrical guitars, the ambitious bass and drumming, the whole instrumentation is reminiscent to the best of prog of the 70's. There is even a Jethro Tull like flute sound (on 'Famine'), and the same track contains a bit like The Talking Drum, or something reminiscent of the Jamie Muir era with King Crimson. I even hear a Supertramp keyboard on 'The Lines In My Hand'. The last song 'Marrow of the Earth' with beautiful acoustical guitar pickings evokes a similar atmosphere as Genesis' After the Ordeal, and is an adequate postlude of the mainly dark sounding album. The singer Akerfeldt sings clear vocals, a bit in the style of Adrian Belew. The overall musicianship is impressive. The album is full of sometimes abrupt rhythmic, dynamic and atmospheric changes, mysterious chord progressions and beautiful harmonies.

If I may utter a criticism (I always have to criticize anything), then it would be, that the songs overall lack a bit of structuring. It is sometimes hard to say, when a song starts or when it stops, and when it reaches its climax. The climaxes are there, and the intros, the outros, the interludes, but not at the places where you expect them. Maybe there is a concept behind it, then it might make sense, but I haven't grasped it, yet. It would explain why the first and the last song as a whole sound like an intro and outro, respectively.

All in all, fans of 70's classic prog rock will love this album. Metal heads probably not. So from my standpoint I can only say: Well done, Opeth!

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