HERITAGE

I love how Mikael Akerfeldt lives his musician life. With his amazing record collection and love to try new things in his music, this guy made growls fine for me. I'm thankful to Mikael Akerfeldt that now I can enjoy great bands like Death and he showed me a lot of new bands with his inspirations. And not just progressive bands either. (Lastly he's done ten radio shows which goes deep in his record collection.)

And now here's Opeth's new album, everybody talked about it like it's gonna be written "70's" all over it. But Opeth is still Opeth, with their 70's love and greeting to their music. New elements from 70's here are flutes, hammond organs and such popular keyboards from 70's. So yes it's a bigger step that Opeth took to 70's. But you can almost hear everything that what makes Opeth Opeth in this record. All that is missing is those crazy shit-ass "I'm totally losing it!!" death growls and attacks. But for me they did enough of it in the past anyway. Instead we get a more heavy rockish sound, which I don't regret hearing, I'm nearly to think that this new sound is better for Opeth. By the way, let's not forget that 70's were about creativity and art that's cared and loved by the artist and listeners. So it would not be so wrong if I said Opeth already lives in 70's anyway!

We get the mellow parts and the acoustic parts and even jazz drums at some point. Axe is really doing good on drums, it's nice to hear that Mikael and him now getting so well and Axe contributes wonderfully. Great guitars and vocals as expected from Opeth. Keyboards are working pretty well too, I hope they do fine without Per Wiberg though. The new guy played only the first song, which is such a lovely and depressing piano suit. If that's how he rolls, I'm sure I can deal with it! But that's probably just him getting warmed to the band. And that's a song that Mikael wrote actually.

So no matter what they'll do with their sound, in my opinion this record is a very successful one.

I actually gave 4 stars for this record but now surprisingly I think it's a solid 5. I can't stop listening to it. It's such a wonderful record that has so much inspiration and deep feelings. The new way Mikael composes his songs is so artistically successful and meaningful. Mikael and Opeth did a really great job. Looking forward to anything that Opeth will do.