Review Summary: A comprehensive, admirable, good taste, Heavy Metal response to the Progressive Rock of the 70's, Blackwater Park is, without a doubt, the most emotional centralized of the Opeth discography, varying from the heavy to the soft with the perfect flowing. Cl
The album starts. Here comes the "Wow" factor of the album. It's just epic. "The Leper Affinity" explodes in powerful Death Metal riff's, to introduce a clean vocal, acoustic passage, travelling through the complex emotional core of the Opeth songs, like it always have been: Gothic, ultra-romantic (in the literature sense), melancholic and, sophisticated, in resume, dramatic. And it ends up like it started. Explosive.
And the explosion is the main feeling to introduce "Bleak" a sorrow-full song, featuring desperate death growlings, that, for me, are the best demonstration of death growling in years. Mikael Akerfeldt just reached his best in this album. on the vocals and in his Solo Guitar, too. The song almost suddenly changes to a clean vocals, still powerful, but clean, Heavy Metal, showing the song chorus. A chorus is not common to Opeth, but it works so well that you don't even notice it is repeated again, at least, a twice. The song slowly changes to a soft guitar solo, a soft vocals passage, and then, it goes to the chorus, breaking into a clean-to-growled-vocals passage. Just amazing, man!
Then, comes "Harvest", a soft acoustic ballad, featuring Steven Wilson sweet back vocals, and (again) a powerful chorus. It's so emotionally-driven, that it drive me to tears.
Well, what to say about "The Drapery Falls"? The best demonstration of everything Opeth means and sounds like. It's powerful, truly progressive rock influenced, sophisticated, clean and growled, fantastically soled. It have great lyrics, a punch-in-the-stomach fashion on the heavy passage, and it ends softly. It's a high value song for me, once it was the first Opeth song I've ever heard. Then the album pass by to
"Dirge for November", a song that starts beautiful, with a guitar riff that is simply cute. Then it changes to a grind, slow, Death Metal, that is simply repulsive, in the good way. It's lyrically short, but with a great mean.
"The Funeral Portrait" it's a hypnotic Death Metal demonstration, since the acoustic start, repeatedly performed. I don't have much to say about it, once I didn't hear it oftenly.
Then, the album came to it's epic ending, the title song "Blackwater Park". It's just amazing. You don't give a *** if the introduction is very, very long. It's just Heavy Metal, in it's progressive proportions, working under meaningful lyrics, and comprising all the album message. Still, that epic and dramatic feeling I told you about. The mystery aura, and the darkness of its lyrics always attracted me to it's gloomy core of sadness, pain, bereavement, loss, and all the matters that made the Doom, Black and Death Metal, the most extreme genres in the Heavy Metal, since the heaviness, thickness and darkness, to the atmosphere of hedonism, social inadequation, sorrow and, even, satanism. But Opeth have its difference: It really features a Progressive Rock influence. Everytime I heard it, I could remember King Crimson and Pink Floyd.
A comprehensive, admirable, good taste, Heavy Metal response to the Progressive Rock of the 70's, Blackwater Park is, without any doubt, the most emotional centralized of the Opeth discography, varying from the heavy to the soft with the perfect flowing. Classic.
