GHOST REVERIES

...if you don't like growling vocal! My advice is: go to the nearby CD shop and buy any CD of band under death metal category, bring it home and spin the CD many times. Oh yes, you will find heavy growling vocal but keep going with spinning the CD. You don't need to enjoy, just spin! After couple of spin, then try this Opeth "Ghost Reveries" album. How would you feel? Better? Worse? Or same? Well, my point is simple: it's a great fallacy to pass this album for only one reason of growling vocal style. Bear with me is you can stand still with this style of singing you will find a full joy of Opeth music! If you compare the singing style of this album by any other Death Metal band, this is much much softer and you still might be able to enjoy it.

As a matter of fact, this album offers you a rich texture of progressive metal music in its own unique style which no other band compares with it. The music of Opeth gives you sense of balanced between heavy side of progressive metal with outburst guitar riffs and choral arrangement and ambient style which is usually characterized by guitar fills. It's for me really engaging the mind. This CD has been with me for months but I just did not have a sufficient time to really enjoy it until last week. Once I spun it back, I kept repeating the spin couple of times and it's probably ten times (or more) overall. Every time I spin it, it always be in its entirety - yes, I could not afford to press "Stop" button at my CD player. It's so enjoyable, I can tell you!

The first two tracks "Ghost of Perdition" (10:29) and "The Baying of the Hounds" (10:41) are basically heavy ones with heavy guitar riffs and growl voice line. There are a lot of surprises from mellow to heavy guitar riffs and also there are many segments which serve as musical break - be it a silent break with mere guitar fills or some with percussions and other instruments like keyboard / mellotron. I even enjoy the growling part because typically it is followed with long sustain music and long growling. It's really nice and fits in with Mikael Åkerfeldt voice characteristics. One unique strength of the band is the musical break with acoustic guitar work and vocal line.

Oh man ... "Beneath the Mire" (7:57) really killed me the first time I listened to it. It's so unique as since the beginning there is a great combination of eastern music nuance and music riffs which project gothic nuance. It starts off basically with a simple drum beats followed with keyboard sounds that resemble eastern music and it's very nice. As usual the music flows in heavy mode but still with the ambient sound. This song sounds to me very thematic with long instrumental piece followed with powerful growl. What a great shot!

"Atonement" (6:28) brings the music into slower pace with some texture of dance music accentuated with eastern sound keyboard work at the background. "Reverie / Harlequin Forest" (11:39) starts with a medium tempo music with some guitar riffs and "normal" singing style. This track seems to be an accessible one; there is some growling but to me is really nice. "Hours of Wealth" (5:20) is an absolute break from heavy music as this comprises guitar fills in a mellow style plus some soft keyboard and great voice line. "The Grand Conjuration" (10:21) brings the music into heavy style with energetic beat and powerful keyboard and guitar work. The album concludes with a sweet "Isolation Years" (3:51) in mellow and melodic style. I can hear strong mellotron sound.

This is definitely an excellent addition to any prog music collection. I even tend to give it a five star rating but I want to give it sometime for me to crystallize my final rating. For the time being, let's just put four stars. Highly Recommended!

Life without music is a mistake. Music without progressive is a fatal tragedy!

Yours progressively, GW

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