THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT

Opeth is back with the death vocals. Mikael wanted to make a heavier album with a new drummer from an extreme metal scene. The songs have no title but numbers or paragraphs in a testament. The booklet is simply a page of a testament with some poetry written. The story is centered around a father's will that reveals the secrets of his life. If I have heard some voices in the back of my head in this album, it's not because I am crazy but because I was listening to the Blu-Ray in Surround (Atmos). I heard some menacing voices from the right and the left that sounded like they were taken from a movie, such as the voice of a devil entity, a monster, or a killer... The music of Opeth's album goes into different moods in 1 song. After some heavy guitar parts, the keyboards and piano calm things down. The music is at times brutal, disturbing, and strange but tempered with calmer passages of harp, flute, and classical tones. And Mikael shows in the 5th track his love for Middle Eastern music. In the 6th song we have such a cool keyboard solo that you wish it had lasted longer. There are also some unusual arrangements in a couple of songs when we hear clapping hands; you can see this in the 50-minute documentary.

The result is a complex and intense album with no breather until the end, with its peaceful atmosphere that reminds of Steve Wilson's song "The Raven that Refused to Sing." This is a heavier album compared to their recent releases but not compared to their first releases. It's Opeth but in a different atmosphere. One thing is sure: you can feel the emotion that Mikael had while writing this album. He says himself, "I was in a trance," and "I only make music that excites me." Yes, this is an exciting album.