ORCHID

Opeth's debut was a waste of time of my life. They are the superstars of the progressive extreme music. This album is not their pride, and not a big deal. Orchid is a melodic and blackened death metal album, sounding different than most of the swedish death metal acts. The songs are lenghty. Five 10 minutes track, but don't go for that, only bad expectations, and this is the worst point of the whole album. To write a lot of lenghty tracks in a debut without a concept or regular musical structure, playing standard melodic death metal riffs section by section. The duration of the tracks are boring, seems to never end, and the guitar riffs are cliche melodic metal, any finnish band could do the same and better. Somehow, these guys were famous in some towns for attracting the neo-gothic / gothic metal fans, including a lot of girls, something unusual to death metal bands. I don't think this is depressive enough for that, this is very far from Katatonia. Maybe because of the dark melancholic feeling and the cover art of the album, but I still don't agree with this 1995 gothic reception. This debut album is lame for any musician or even Opeth fans. The fine moments are the environmental and dark ambient passages. But nothing could save those uncantchy tracks.