DAMNATION

This is the first out of a threesome reviews of Opeth albums I will do right now. I bought three of their albums recently because they were for sale and in fact it's the only reason why I bought them. Not out of disrespect for the band but because I already knew they were not my cup of tea. This was thus a great opportunity to give them a sort of last chance because well you never know do you ?

And in fact I'm glad I did it because it gave me a bitter insight in what the band is really about. The only reference I had were two songs I knew thanks to (once again) progarchives and they were Closure from this album and The Drapery falls from Blackwater Park. I thought for a long time that I knew enough and would never buy albums of this band. But because the sale was on and the gnawing thought that maybe I hadn't been quite fair to them made me decide to buy the already mentioned albums as well as Deliverance.

Now about this one. I found out that Opeth was a pretty rough metal band with grunts and the other expectable features but with this album they (for once ?) took a totally different road, namely the quiet road and I have to say they really surprised me here. I don't understand why a band chooses for grunts if they have such a great vocalist in their band. Because what Mikael Akerfeldt shows on this album is of high quality. And that doesn't just go for the vocals, also the instrumentalists handle the quiet repertoire very well.

The album starts with a few very nice tracks, nice melodies, beautiful ballads. It's great stuff actually and even though I don't know all their albums and still don't intend to buy anymore after the mentioned three I still dare to maintain that this has to be the best album in their career. Unless of course they made another album with just great ballad-like songs but I don't think they did. After the first three songs comes Closure, the one I already knew and didn't like very much. But who would have thought it was the least track of the album ? I didn't but I'm glad I changed my mind as I described.

The last 4 songs are not as good as the first three but still somewhat better than Closure so that my final verdict is even going to be difficult choice between 3 and 4 stars. After a bit of calculation by rating track by track I come to an average of 3,41 so I'm afraid I will have to round it down to three. Still a great effort by Opeth !