OPETH — Still Life (review)

OPETH — Still Life album cover Album · 1999 · Progressive Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
5/5 ·
Warthur
It took a long time for Opeth's music to fully grow on me, but even when I didn't quite "get" their appeal I could immediately appreciate how their Still Life opens with one of their best ever tracks - the progressive death metal epic The Moor.

Previously, I'd usually find myself losing focus after this, with the sobering acoustic piece Benighted throwing me off, but having better-digested Opeth's preceding albums has made me better appreciate the role of acoustic moments in their music. Even from their earliest phases, before they'd put out entire albums of essentially non-metal material, such interludes had been a significant part of their sound, and whilst I still think the vocals on it sound a little off - perhaps a few studio effects being deployed to cover for the limitations of the band's clean vocals at this time - I think it's a remarkably effective piece whose role in the pacing of the album I think I now understand better.

Perhaps my previous mistake was coming to the album in a primarily death metal mood, because whilst there is still a healthy dose of death metal here, especially in some of the harsher and more aggressive passages and in the harsher vocals, Still Life is arguably the point where the balance of Opeth's music shifted from progressive death metal to progressive metal which incorporates death metal within its musical palette, but which more overtly includes ingredients of more mainstream varieties of metal or progressive rock - check that glorious moment of calm about five minutes into Moonlapse Vertigo before it goes into a harsher section in which extreme metal vocals and blast beats on the drum are set against a progressive rock guitar solo building to the climactic section at 7-ish minutes in.

I'm glad I tried to reassess Opeth, because I had taken far too long to fully appreciate what they accomplished on this album, which is far subtler and cleverer in how it's put together and how it balances its different influences than I had previously given it credit for.
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