Review Summary: The title says it all; a truly daring album from the 'next big thing' in progressive metal.
Ever since the release of 2001's 'Blackwater Park,' Opeth have become the 'next big thing' in the nerdy world of prog metal. BWP was a turning point for the Swedish group, and, although extended debates have raged about this subject, it's regarded as their magnum opus. It was the record on which they defined their sound, perfecting their mix of brutal death metal and intricate acoustic passages. It received deserved critical acclaim, and basically propelled them into the limelight (at least relative to other prog-metal outfits) that they now find themselves in. After that point, they've been experimenting with their sound increasingly with each new release. The quasi-double album of 2002's insanely heavy Deliverance, and 2003's uncharacteristically jazzy Damnation, divided fans. 2005's Ghost Reveries saw them begin to embrace their prog side a lot more than they had previously, with King Crimson era hallmarks such as the driving organ in 'Baying Of The Hounds,' giving fans of their metal side reason to worry that they were essentially developing backwards into a fully-fledged 70s prog-rock band. It's for this reason that there were equal parts anticipation and trepidation in the fan camp as they awaited the release of Watershed in 2008; would it be a return to their roots, or would it see songwriter Akerfeldt paying further homage to his prog heroes?
Fortunately, to my mind at least, it turned out to be much more a case of the latter. But that was far from immediately apparent when first listening to the record; Nick Drake-style opener 'Coil' is the band's softest song yet, featuring deft acoustic work and female vocals accompanying Akerfeldt's in the second half of the song. It's almost comical at how much alarm this caused fans, probably leading to hundreds of people disowning the band before track two had even started. If you had started to wonder just how 'out there' this album was going to get for Opeth in the gap after the first track, you'd probably have been given a heart attack as the explosive second track, Heir Apparent, started with a massive tritone echoed by both guitars, at hilariously loud volumes compared to the quiet ending of Coil before it. This track is one of the heaviest in Opeth's entire discography (Demon Of The Fall notwithstanding) featuring exclusively the death metal vocals that continue to put off newcomers to the band, myself included. I'll confess that I don't really get anything out of Opeth when they're being one dimensionally death metal, so this track doesn't do much for me, although it's fairly highly regarded amongst fans who cherish any track where it's just Akerfeldt yelling in their ear with incessant dissonant guitar riffs. Which is cool if you like that sort of thing.
Track three, The Lotus Eater, is where it starts to get... odd. Very odd. It begins with Akerfeldt humming the melody with some strings for accompaniment, and just as you readjust to this complete sonic shift from Heir Apparent, some ridiculous blastbeats kick in from the drums, and Akerfeldt then start harmonizing growls. Yes, it's completely out of left field, but after you stop questioning what the hell is going on, you realise that it's an experiment that paid off extremely well, and the appeal lingers long after the novelty has worn off. But The Lotus Eater is far from done. After a more traditionally metal first half, the song breaks down into a psychedelic guitar solo, with the production lending the wandering strumming an ethereal air. This goes on for a bit at a leisurely pace, bringing to mind memories of King Crimson's 'Moonchild' in some ways, before the song decides to drop an insane bomb on the listener once again. What follows the guitar solo is so unexpected that on first listen, one can barely help but laugh. This section features a hilariously funky keyboard riff, which is eventually backed by the whole band. If you search on YouTube for 'Mariopeth,' you'll probably understand why so many fans hated this section of the song. But this is exactly what makes Watershed a much more endearing beast than its predecessors; it's actually got a sense of fun about it, that the likes of BWP and Deliverance lacked. This is what happens when Opeth stop taking themselves so seriously, and it suits the band so much more than some fans seem to believe.
After The Lotus Eater, you're essentially ready for anything Akerfeldt could possibly throw at you. That's why the placement of Burden immediately afterwards means that it's nothing really shocking. 'Sure, a cheesy classic rock ballad on a death metal album,' you think, having just experienced a nice bit of jazz fusion beforehand. Burden itself is actually a great emulation of any cheesy ballad you could call to mind, with an equally cheesy (but AWESOME.) keyboard solo in the vein of Deep Purple bringing the 70s vibe to the forefront of the album, to such an extent that several hardcore Opeth fans will almost certainly have turned their much awaited death metal album off by now, never to buy another Opeth record again. Still, once again, Opeth show their fun side by ending Burden with an unsettling detuning of an acoustic guitar as it plays the final riff over and over again, until it's in such a wrong key as to be painful to listen to. Again, loads of people seemed to hate on this kind of experimentation at the time of the album's release, but it's just so much more fun than previous Opeth efforts that one can't help but smile.
Following Burden is Porcelain Heart, the album's weakest and most forgettable track. It still doesn't miss the opportunity for some, by now completely normal, craziness, with an extended drum solo in the middle either crossing the boundaries of pretension, or just going over my head. Or possibly both. Either way, the track is fairly average, especially by Opeth's standards, and at this point during a first listen, one might begin to worry that Opeth's experiments within the genre were running out of steam.
Enter Hessian Peel, the standout on the album before it even starts due to it being the obligatory 'epic,' clocking in at over eleven minutes' running time. The first half is once again atypical of Opeth's previous work, with classical guitar lines and mellow drumbeats going contrary to the band's entire back catalogue, but in a wondrously inventive way. But as the final note of the first half fades into an organ pulse, the song gets back to familiar ground to the Swedes, and it's transformed; transformed into a dense tapestry of equally dense riffs, all of them bearing the traditional Opeth hallmark of being, to use a phrase that no actual human being should ever use without irony, balls to the walls heavy. Akerfeldt growls again for the first time in a good three tracks, and all is well again for the death metalheads listening to this album, clinging to every scrap of distortion they can find. So Hessian Peel is a twofold success; it's got an innovative and compelling first half that sounds like nothing Opeth have penned before, but it marries this with some of the finest death metal riffs and vocals that they've ever produced, leaving both camps happy.
The album ends on a high note, in the form of Hex Omega. If the metalheads were expecting the return of the heaviness to be found at the end of Hessian Peel to continue, they would, once again, be disappointed. Hex Omega is arguably the strangest track on the album; whilst it doesn't have a single moment that compares to The Lotus Eater's jazz fusion freakout, it's just consistently unusual throughout. There's no real frame of reference for the song to be found in any of Opeth's other tracks, as it's a slow, jazzy not-quite-ballad with eerie musical undertones lurking around every verse's corner. Akerfeldt's vocals drift aimlessly through the breeze created by the soft arpeggiating of the guitar, and each verse is like a lullaby, leaving the listener with a false sense of security before the aggressive chorus creeps up, heralding the return of the heavy riffs, but without any of the death metal vocals (a bonus, in my book) The song, and album, reaches its finale with a majestic final riff, which manages to simultaneously hark back to the sounds to be found on BWP, such as in Bleak, whilst still pushing Opeth's sound further still into the stratosphere of just what prog-metal is capable of, further than even the most innovative musicians on the scene, Steven Wilson included, have explored at this point. And all of this has been achieved with no growls.
That final sentence will either be the album's biggest plus point, or the most obvious mark of Opeth's 'selling out,' depending on where you herald from in terms of musical circles. Obviously, the hardcore fans were divided by Watershed, moreso than by any of the band's releases up to this point (even Damnation, which is odd, as it was a far more removed from Opeth's core sound than Watershed is); some embraced the more frequent progressive influences, whilst some admonished the band for the lack of growls, and general actual metal sections, included on the record. Personally, death metal vocals have always been a hurdle for me to get through in order to actually enjoy Opeth's music, with Bleak being the one exception, so I'm a little biased against their inclusion already. But even if I was ardently pro-growls, I think it would be incredibly difficult for me to find a way to put a negative spin on Watershed; it still includes enough truly brutal metal sections that it can be seen as a culmination of the band's work up to this point, but it also adds so many new influences, innovative sections, and just plain fun ideas, that it transforms Opeth into an entirely new sort of band. They're tied down to the restrictions of the admittedly narrow-minded prog-metal fanbase no longer; they're now free to further explore any of the new ideas they've presented so eloquently here, and, judging by what Akerfeldt has been saying about the new album, which is due out this year, we're in for yet another mind*** of a prog-metal album. With luck, on the next outing, that genre tag won't even be fully applicable anymore.
