This band has been a huge gateway into a lot of things metal. More than a decade ago, I listened to some of their tracks from Damnation record and it was by far the most accessible. After multiple repeated attempts to dig into their sound, it clicked one fine morning. I don't even remember when that happened. Probably a couple of years ago. I should have written it down! knowing how significant of an event it would be. My entire view on metal music as a whole opened up due to Opeth. There were other key groups as well. Tool, Agalloch, and Dream Theater come to mind. Opeth's discography is so wide and dynamic that picking a record to listen and appreciate became an almost frustrating task. Things just didn't work for me until I re-oriented myself and uncluttered my mind to sit through a random album in its entirety. I loved the cover art of In Cauda Venenum and with a keen hope to not miss out on how the metal community regards Opeth, and whether my own journey is compatible with the trend so to speak, I powered through. Something about that lazy morning and the fact that there were a few birds perched outside, with a leafless tree in the background called out. Garden of Earthly Delights opened up slow, took its time and then...it happened. I got bricked. I was in it. The sonic tones kept intensifying and I felt the urgency. A lean communication. Soft bristles. Tough standing. No vocals yet. That is reserved for the second track Dignity. The opening track so meticulously blended into the second one with such great vocals by Mikael. Everything else was on pause as I dug through their entire body of work and everything just fell into place. And just like that Dan Swano happened. His collab with Mikael on Crimson was fantastic. Multiple streams opened up and I constantly am floored by all this great music. Picking favorites and ranking their work means declaring war! But music is subjective, like art in general. I get to see them perform live soon and I can't wait for it.
Had a lot of fun reading this in depth series on Opeth and their sound - An Opeth Retrospective.
A few stand out passages:
Some art changes who you are while other art reveals who you always were, in occult shadow and the lingering yearning of youthful and aged hearts.
While metal and its extreme variants have had notorious links to ..well extremity, I think what is often overlooked is how its all human nature down to its core. I am not merely dismissing the bad stuff by delegating it to the realms of human nature, but instead want to invoke a sense of open thinking towards all things extreme. Maybe there is a middle ground (as there always is) to understand all kinds of art if we think slowly.
Often, the cruelty and evil of extreme art is like a warding spell, a means to conjure and contain this wickedness so it doesn't transcend past the limits of the fantasizing mind. Ah, if this dynamic could be so easily solved by revolutionary thinkers and philosophers and art critics, our lives would be so much easier! But alas, it is not to be so.
