STILL LIFE

This one's an odd beast at best. Opeth, at that time, were pretty firmly ensconced in death metal territory; bearing some of the hallmarks of that genre (the double-bass drums, growling vocals, and heavy guitars) while shying away from the OTHER hallmarks of the genre (the irritating blast beats, the downtuned guitars, the posturing and Satanic imagery). These songs, while well-done (in terms of production, writing, arrangement and playing), seem to have one foot in the death metal of "My Arms, Your Hearse" while bearing the stylistic trademarks of "Deliverance" (a record that wouldn't be written and released for another 3 years!) Call me crazy, but I distinctly hear riffs and melodic passages from "Deliverance" in songs like "The Moor", "Godhead's Lament" and the all-acoustic, clean- vocalled "Benighted". It's weird, but I really do. Makes me wonder what they wrote first...did they write music for "Deliverance" and then decide that they needed to make it another record, or what? Weird. I'm gonna go ahead and give this a high 3/low 4 for my rating. It's great for what it is, but the soup hadn't been spiced up enough for my taste. "Blackwater Park", "Deliverance" and "Damnation" are better by far.