GHOST REVERIES

The first Opeth CD Review, where to start? Well my youngest son got me into these in the past six months - listening to them while helping him with the dishes after dinner ! Well this CD is a real mixed bag of total-thrash metal with the death-metal growling that is good for getting boy- band fans diving for cover and soft melodic mellotron and classical guitar duets. None of the tracks achieve epic length but four are 10 minutes plus, and these longer compositions are the backbone of the CD, lots of good heavy riffing with melodic interludes. The album could do with a few more guitar solo's but there are a few good fret moments in "Beneath the Mire", "The Baying of the Hounds" and "The Grand conjuration". I'm lucky in that I like very thrashy technical metal AND melodic progressive rock, thus tracks like "Atomement" appeal to me even though this is a lighter track full of good Mellotron and classical guitar. This is one of my favourites on this CD along with "Beneath the Mire". A good solid technical effort with lots of good moments to take you through the whole CD, 3.95 stars rounded up to FOUR!