GHOST REVERIES

Opeth is a Swedish death metal band that throughout it's career has incorporated many style and reached the level of progressive rock. Their latest album is entitled "Ghost Reveries" and was released by Roadrunner Records. Opeth's contract with the label is suggestive for the commercial potential of the group. I am not saying Opeth went mainstream, I am just assuming their music has been receiving more interest from rock audiences around the world. This last release is basically a death metal musical masterpiece that develops using psychedelic and folk influences, achieving an occult atmosphere that represents the lyrical context of the record. Unlike most progressive rock bands and artists, the music of Opeth consists of several anticalophilic principles derived from doom metal and death metal. The album inspires a bleak mood supported by a mystic atmosphere that darkly and smoothly touches the listener's ears and heart. Each note is a desperate hellish scream interpreted brutally or softly, but equally disturbing. The spirituality of the message is obvious and remarkably subtle which gives a relaxing self abandoning feeling that reverberates throughout 60 minutes of music listening. The rhythm is mind abusing because of it's relentless oscillation between brutal death metal and jazz/folk, but in the same time fascinating, leaving behind one thought:can music inspire so many feeling simultaneously?. YES it can. Mikael Akerfeldt is an extraordinary vocal being able to easily switch from brutal death "grunting" to melodic and clean singing, technique generally used by doom/death metal vocals in the 90's and by metalcore singers after 2000. The two guitars do not respect the general pattern used in metal. There is no solo guitar and no rhythm guitar, both of them climbing and descending alternatively , creating once again that typical Opeth sound marked by tension and grief. Each song is special in it's own way although they can be classified within two two categories: the first and most encountered is the one regarding the high intensity and the second one represents the songs based on classical rock and dark ambient. In conclusion, I cannot add anything but the fact that Opeth have breached news limits with Ghost Reveries and I am very excited about the new album which will probably be released in 2008.