MORNINGRISE

Opeth

Tech/Extreme Prog Metal

3.74 | 867 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

Even though Opeth is my favorite band of all time, it is my job as a reviewer to review an album as non-biased as possible to the outside world.

Opeth's second release is when the prog elements of Opeth's style begin to take notice. Like Orchid, this album also contains five long songs (not counting Silhouette and Requiem from Orchid). The twin guitar melodies are still being used in this album, so it is still not quite the Opeth most people know and love.

While this album is enjoyable, it suffers from the main symptom its predecessor suffered from; songs that are too long but filled with good ideas. All of the songs on here are over ten minutes long, and sometimes can take a little too much out of you, even for a prog fan. They could have made shorter songs and incorporated some of the thoughts of the longer songs, making it less taxing to listen to.

The final song on the album, To Bid You Farewell, shows that Opeth did have a soft side to them that they were afraid to reveal. Its a nice little song, but nothing great, unlike some of their later songs (Benighted, A Fair Judgement, Windowpane, Hours of Wealth). It showed what they were capable of doing it, but it didn't measure up.

However, this album does contain the one gem that any Opeth fan should listen to: Black Rose Immortal. Clocking in at twenty minutes, this song features many twists and turns in its music, featuring riffs of all kind; heavy, epic, soft, beautiful, etc. It is the culmination of everything they worked for in their first two albums.

I don't feel quite as bad for giving this album 3 stars. Even Akerfeldt said this was his least favorite album and said this was in the day when they were "very pretentious." I agree Mr. Akerfeldt. By this mainly for Black Rose Immortal, and see if you can find some interesting parts in the other songs.

thesleeper72 | 3/5 | 2011-12-31

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