Opeth

 

My Arms, Your Hearse may have been a basis for a lot of their later work, but it seems like too often bands get knocked for making albums that are partial recreations of an old sound or idea, when a good portion of them are really improving on the past work. Such is a case here. Opeth is building, expanding and refining the sounds they started to develop with My Arms, Your Hearse both in composition and production. They are all great albums though.

My Arms, Your Hearse

Blackwater Park

Deliverance

Morningrise

Still Life

Ghost Reveries

 

I cannot place Damnation in amongst that (even though i really like it), because of its vastly different nature.

 

I will now talk generally: If your after songs with many many riff change-ups which interrupt the flow of the music and account for less competent song writing IMO (less competent for the fact that the artist needs to insert hundreds of smaller, more different riffs, into a peice to build up the minutes rather than actually taking us through a coherent musical journey forging the future from the past), & more chugging, monotonous riffs in the heavier sections, then go for Ghost Reveries as so many people seem to be doing.

 

If your willing to put in some effort rather than play it 'safe' (reletively), then submerge yourself in the "more metalic" Orchid. Yes, it is cold in some aspects, yes it is a bit raw in some aspects...but so is life in all its variation and beauty - and i think the melodies and harmonies here (some of which being quite warm) provide the needed balance to the equation. I haven't heard many peices of music that take one through such a musical journey as Orchid. Sure it might not be as bouncy or as immediately busy as Ghost Reveries (arrangement wise), but for richness, creativity, profound beauty and sustained NARATIVE in melody and harmony, Orchid reigns, IMO. This review will reveal that while i love progressive rock and some progressive metal (along with classical music & death/black metal), i do think that a piece of music is actually progressive unless this is reflected in the actual tones and notes of the music - i.e. a piece of music progressing in its course in relation to sound melody and harmony, employing dissonance and consenance etc, taking the listening somewhere rather than picking him/her up ubruptly and putting him/her down in the same fashion, and thus most importantly - reflecting the classical tradition in all the new forms available to rock musicians.

 

Having said this i do like Ghost Reveries, but (somewhat in line with the above comments re: my arms your hears representing the pinacle of Opeth's 'progression'); if we are talking progression on this website, then i certainly cannot see how Ghost Reveries has seen the band continuing to "progress", except perhaps in relation to their bank account.