Review Summary: Weirdness for the sake of it isn't the same thing as "experimentation", and it certainly isn't an art form either.
Some two or so years ago, I sat down to type up a review of Opeth's
Pale Communion on this very site. While it's a review I'm indeed very proud of, I simultaneously wish I had waited until a few listens later to have written it, as my impressions of the album improved and I began to listen to it a lot more frequently. Part of that could be chalked up to my emotions at the time, as I was going through a rather tough adjustment period that came with moving to a different neighbourhood, and the album helped me through it. But even both casting emotional bias aside and if emotional bias was the only thing the album had going for it, it still holds up well two years later, as a full listen through just earlier this year on a train ride from Oslo to Gothenburg brought back the fond memories of the first few listens. That being said, despite my impression that the album is a tenfold improvement upon the lackluster
Heritage as far as making an album that adopts 1970s jazz-prog influences into a modern metal sound goes, the reception that album got at the time was... interesting to say the least. The frontpage review of that album makes a distinction between pre and post-
Heritage Opeth, with the latter being referred to as "Opeth" (sic). Though I disagreed with this sentiment, the review did make some undeniably good points- namely, that Opeth's transition to the jazz-prog sound cost them their atmospheric sound conjured by the death metal sounds of classics like
Morningrise. Well, here we are in 2016. Opeth have released another album, for better or for worse. So despite the improvement on
Pale Communion, why is there next to no hype for this? It can be chalked mostly down to the last two albums for sure, but the best answer can be found by a simple listen to
Sorceress.
What exactly is wrong with
Sorceress, strictly speaking? You probably saw this coming a mile away, but I'll say it anyway: it makes the Opeth/"Opeth" claim seem completely valid. Sure, nobody expects another
Ghost Reveries, but considering how polarizing progressive rock already is on its own, and especially Opeth's brand of it, Opeth's sudden evolution is starting to sound like more trouble than it's really worth. Nowadays, a new Opeth album is a complete non-event to all but their most hardcore fans. If casual fans aren't either illegally downloading torrents of it or waiting for the price to come down on iTunes (or even waiting to Spotify/Tidal it), overworked HMV employees are begrudgingly burying the copies of the album under the letter "O" in the Metal section on Friday and forgetting what even the cover looks like almost immediately. Even their opening spot as a special guest at Iron Maiden's 2016 Ullevi Stadium concert in Gothenburg was met with little more than indifference by anyone in the crowd who wasn't a fan, despite a strong performance. So where does that leave the album itself?
Now, I'll definitely start off by saying that I'll admit that Opeth can't be accused of trying new things here. No two Opeth albums sound the same at all, and this album does bring some new elements in. Unfortunately, even they can't save the better half of music from being agonizingly dull, and at times they're downright cringe-worthy. The best example of this can be found on the album's title track, which begins with an intro that can only be described as "King Crimson doing circus music", and that is not a compliment. It's bad enough that it's weird as *** and sounds like the band just boredly fiddling around on their instruments to see if they work, but it has no relation to the rest of the track itself, and even worse, it opens what is admittedly an otherwise decent, heavy and crunchy tune with a doomy atmosphere. True, I only just mentioned one song, but this trend is apparent throughout the album and is embarrassing coming from a band that has been around long enough to know better.
True, Opeth have never been ones to shy away from bizarreness- after all, "The Lotus Eater" has a jazz-boogie section in the middle of a rather atmospheric tune, but Opeth take it to excruciating extremes here. The biggest issue here is that very few of the songs are good in their entirety, and the rest are either good for the most part or have some decent parts before Akerfeldt and co. certain feel the need to go off on some bizarre tangent. And then there are some tracks that are just useless altogether. "The Seventh Sojourn" tries too hard to take the gorgeous eastern vibes of "Voice of Treason" and turn them into a legitimate eastern folk song, but it ends up coming off as "Voice of Treason" on steroids rather than a respectful homage to Eastern folk music. Worse, it's completely out of place on the record and feels like "the instrumental" rather than a passionately written instrumental track. "Chrysalis" is a song that's surprisingly pretty catchy for the most part, but has no reason to be over 7 minutes long when it's as repetitive as it is. It stretches itself so thin that the solo in the middle, a section that should be a thrill to listen to, feels like an excuse to stretch it out. Then you have "Strange Brew", the nearly 9-minute track that should be the "centerpiece" of the album... yeah, it sucks. It's no "Moon Above" and it's certainly no "Heir Apparent" or "The Grand Conjuration". It begins with Mikael's echoey vocals over piano, which I guess is supposed to set some tone or atmosphere... instead it just sounds like Foo Fighters doing drunken karaoke. Sadly, it doesn't get better from there, with a keyboard riff that leads into a pseudo-heavy section that's supposed to get us all excited, but instead it just sounds like a poor man's "Raider II" by Steven Wilson. Mikael's voice certainly doesn't help either, sounding horribly strained for the most part.
Fortunately it isn't all doom and gloom and disappointment. Despite some pretty cringey lyrics, "The Wilde Flowers" is a pretty funky tune with a nice and doomy atmosphere, and "Will O The Wisp" has some Jethro Tull vibes to it helped along by a beautiful vocal performance by Mikael Akerfeldt, which sadly can't be said for the rest of the album. Likewise, the production is weirdly overdone and horribly muddy sounding- a rarity for Steven Wilson, who usually is insistent on not letting such a product out of the studio. And "overdone" describes not just the production but the overall vibe of the album. It tries way too hard to be
Pale Communion through the lens of
Ghost Reveries, only to sound like a bastardization more than a realization. And it's becoming an increasingly valid concern nowadays that shifting entirely to a 1970s direction as instantaneously as the band did was a bad idea, with
Pale Communion being a fluke. Either way, it's clear that Mikael Akerfeldt and co either need to have a word with themselves and more thoroughly think of which direction they want to take, or just take a break, as it's becoming worringly clear they're becoming more and more stale.
