Review Summary: Light and dark alternate and blend together in perfect proportion in what might be the highest point in Opeth's impressive discography.
Typically, good albums can be broken up into two categories: those that sound great immediately but have no staying power, growing stale with time and hardly ever listened to again except on a few occasions, and those that take a few listens to truly appreciate (the so-called "grower" albums) and get better with each listen as you discover more and more of the subtleties in the music.
Many (most, in fact) of my personal favorite albums fall into the latter category, but there are a few albums that "click" immediately, and stick, never growing stale. Opeth's 2001 masterpiece Blackwater Park is one of the best examples of this. From the crushing opening riff of "The Leper Affinity" I was hooked upon my first listen.
Yes, the opening riff of the album is extremely heavy (and extremely memorable, as an aside), and is shortly accompanied by Mikael Åkerfeldt's growled lyrics, "we entered winter once again…" but soon after the opening verse the song hints at the melodic side of Opeth's music, featured most prominently in the ballad "Harvest" and in breaks in the heaviness during the songs "Bleak" and "The Drapery Falls".
For this is the trademark of this album, heavy riffs and death metal growls alternated with delicate melodies and beautiful cleanly sung vocals. It’s the contrast between light and dark that makes this album so compelling. This theme was followed to its logical conclusion on the two albums that followed Blackwater Park, Deliverance and Damnation, where even the artwork reflected the musical difference between the two albums (Deliverance was dark and heavy, whereas Damnation was light and mellow.)
Just to give my personal favorite example of this sort of contrast; going back to the song "Bleak," just listen to the section at 3:26 when Åkerfeldt sings about "devious movements in your eyes, moves me from relief" or after when the clean vocals give way to growls to close out the song.
Perhaps one of the things that make this album in particular stand out among Opeth's impressive discography is the participation of progressive rock mastermind Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree, who produced the album and also provided keys and backing vocals on a few songs. The trademark atmosphere present in Porcupine Tree's music works very well with Opeth's brand of melodic death metal.
Though calling Opeth "death metal" is technically accurate – the songs contain the heavy guitar and growling vocals typical of the subgenre – Opeth are so much more than that. The song "Dirge for November," for example, could very well be called an unofficial soundtrack for the Autumn season. The opening and closing melodies conjure mental images of red, brown, and yellow leaves peacefully drifting to the ground, or being washed down a bubbling creek in the woods. The dirge-like middle section (the song is aptly named) with its eerily processed vocals on the other hand perfectly captures the eeriness of a chilly Autumn evening.
After a violent and more conventional (but still distinctively Opeth) metal song in "The Funeral Portrait," the beautiful two minute instrumental "Patterns in the Ivy" consisting of an interplay between an acoustic guitar and a piano leads into the title track.
At 12 minutes long, "Blackwater Park" is the main attraction, cited by many as the best song on the album. Beginning with some amazing heavy riffs and a short vocal introduction the song leads into a soft section with gentle electric and acoustic guitar melodies.
This gentle section is short lived, however, and is followed by the heaviest part of the whole album, with more eerie processed vocals:
"Lepers coiled beneath the trees
Dying men in bewildered soliloquies
Perversions bloom round the bend
Seekers, lost in their quest
Ghosts of friends frolic
Under the waning moon"
Impressive lyrics coming from a band without any native English speakers, in my opinion. After a few more verses of similarly bleak lyrics and some great guitar riffs, the album comes to a fitting close with the lyrics that are for one reason or another totemic among Opeth fans (I've even seen them tattooed various places):
"Sick liaisons raised this monumental mark;
The sun sets forever over Blackwater Park"
This an album that has to be heard to be believed. I think it’s safe to call it one of the finest heavy metal albums of all time. If you consider yourself a fan of heavy metal and aren’t bothered by harsh vocals, you would be doing yourself a disservice not having heard it.
