Ghost Reveries - Opeth (2005)

I mentioned Radiohead a little while ago as an example of a band that used success to get more adventurous when most bands tend to get more conventional. Opeth is another great example of that. They started out as a 90s death metal band, albeit one of best you’d ever heard. Then as they grew, they shed the genre tags like a snake sheds its skin and grew into a full-on progressive rock / heavy rock outfit that doesn’t seem to have a lot of use for labels.

Ghost Reveries is maybe midway along that progression. They’ve added what you’d call progressive elements, but mostly “progressive” here means they’re just too talented to keep playing the same thing they’d been doing. There’s still a lot of hard metal edge on this record, a feature they’d move further away from eventually. The record is immaculately recorded, with all the instruments clear in the mix. Singer Mikael Åkerfeldt still does the death metal growl in places, but is growing more confident in his clean singing abilities. There’s a definite groove to a lot of the tracks as well, which just pushes them further away from their beginnings.

A great document of a band in top form figuring out what they want to do.

Tracks I Liked:

Beneath The Mire - If you’re not sure if extreme metal is for you, give this track a try. If it doesn’t get your blood pumping, then metal probably doesn’t have much to offer you.

Ghost of Perdition - A wide-ranging workout that hits on a little of everything the band can do.

Reverie / Harlequin Forest - I can’t talk very technically about harmonies, but I would call the guitar work and chords on this song “jazzy.” There are a lot of embellishing notes that make it all sound much more full and lush.