MORNINGRISE

Opeth has taken a different approach to all of their albums, but their second release, Morningrise, does carry a lot of the same styles, sounds, and moods as Orchid. The material here, however, shows improvements in all areas from the previous year's release. The compositions are stronger overall, and more memorable. Akerfeldt's voice has improved a bit, most notably in his clean voice, which is used more often. The acoustic passages are more frequent, and are noticeably more developed than those on Orchid. Pretty much every aspect, both good and bad, from their debut was improved upon here.

While Opeth has always written long songs, this is the only of their records in which all tracks topped 10 minutes. It is also their only album to feature a 20 minute song. The constant shifting from the heavy sections to the calm sections compliments the narrative lyrics almost as if the songs were audio movies, even more so because there is hardly any repetition of passages. One might argue that the structures of these songs are a bit formulaic within the band. Surely no other band does what Opeth does, still, all but one of these songs have similar structures: speedy riffs, heavy music, guttural screams, followed by rich melodies, acoustic segments, clean vocals, etc. and repeat, numerous times. The songs themselves also bear the same general sound as well. This is the only Opeth record that one could even think to use such an argument against it though. It really isn't a big deal to me, and it shouldn't be. If the same thing occurred beyond just one record, we would have a problem. Fortunately, that wouldn't be the case.

The final track, "To Bid You Farewell," uses no screaming, and is mainly acoustic and clean guitar based, except for 3 of the last 4 minutes, where the clean vocals remain, but the metallic music makes one last appearance before the song and album come to a close.

Every track is excellent. Even the 20 minutes song, "Black Rose Immortal" remains tight and interesting its entire duration. Progressive Metal fans, or fans of any metal for that matter, will enjoy this release.