OPETH — Blackwater Park (review)

OPETH — Blackwater Park album cover Album · 2001 · Progressive Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
5/5 ·
Pekka
After establishing a new sound on My Arms, Your Hearse and learning to write with it on Still Life, Opeth were in a stable position. A solid line-up was in place, they had a great album behind them, and a new producer in Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree. And so once again unrehearsed and unprepared, the band entered the studio to record a new album.

Since Still Life not much had changed, the style is essentially the same blend of death metal with acoustic passages and epic everchanging structures, but with Blackwater Park the band squeezed that last little bit of creativity out of them to make their first undisputed masterpiece. The arrangements have an extra dose of liveliness and colour, the sound is fuller and the tracks, well, a tad more interesting and enjoyable. Martin Mendez had made his recording debut on Still Life, but while his bass was a bit buried in the mix on that album, on Blackwater Park he gets through with brilliant lines a plenty. For example the midsection of Bleak owes much of its greatness to his bass work. Martin Lopez's drumming is getting livelier by every album, here it's pure enjoyment trying to airdrum along to the tracks and find him doing something unpredictable every time you think you got a hold of the beat. But as Mikael Åkerfeldt was taking a bigger and bigger hold of the writing for the band, it's difficult to say which parts come from which visionary head.

Years ago The Drapery Falls was the first song to make an impression on me, and still today I think it's the Opeth track best capturing their combination of atmosphere, great riffs, the distorted guitar orchestra, versatile vocals, beauty, and the sometimes drastic but always fitting contrasts between the ugly and the beautiful. The change from the brutal landslide to the gorgeous acoustic section around 7:50 and the ensuing transitions between them might be my favourite Opeth moment ever. Harvest takes the Opeth ballad to the best results yet following Credence from Hearse and Benighted from Still Life, Bleak has many of my all-time favourite Opeth moments and The Funeral Portrait some absolutely head crushing riffs and transitions. And while the rest of the tracks reach the same standards, I find no room for complaining.

One of my favourite metal albums and the first peak of Opeth.
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