You can’t rely on Sunny D to turn your children’s skin orange anymore and you can’t expect Opeth to deliver an hour’s worth of death growls either. Things change. Fruit-to-artificial-ingredient ratios fluctuate, as do the creative desires of Swedish musicans. And you thought soft drinks and rock music had nothing in common.
The implication isn’t that Opeth’s latest incarnation on their 12th LP, ‘Sorceress’, is a shadow of records past. It’s just wildly different to the majority of their catalogue, as their last two releases, ‘Heritage’ and ‘Pale Communion’, have also been.
Mikael Åkerfeldt is still trying to build a time machine in order to get signed to Vertigo Records in the ‘70s, with Opeth channelling that love for vintage progressive rock into lots of Hammond organ and recording sessions at Rockfield Studios.
The Seventh Sojourn is largely instrumental and could have easily been culled from one of Queen’s more daring records, while The Wilde Flowers borrows from the Cream and Deep Purple albums their fellow countrymen Ghost have also been hammering of late, even if Åkerfeldt’s vocal lines are more defined, crisp and catchy than the ghouls’ output.
But Opeth do more than ape their heroes. The music of Cream, Camel and Pink Floyd is used as a springboard into the unknown. Where ‘Pale Communion’ felt slightly bloated with nostalgia, ‘Sorceress’ uses history’s lessons to sharpen Opeth’s current output.
They give them a metal twist and remould the past in the most jarring of fashions. When that title track kicks in? That’s so heavy metal. Then you’ve got the near-nine-minute Strange Brew, which amounts to Porcupine Tree’s Steven Wilson shaking Black Sabbath awake before treading through prog, jazz, doom and more. It crackles with energy and holds some of Åkerfeldt’s most heart-wrenching vocals to date. Yes, this is the same bloke who screamed The Leper Affinity.
But ‘Sorceress’ is also unmistakably Opeth. The pace, breakneck solos and gnarled riffs of ‘Ghost Reveries’ are recalled during Chrysalis, a track only discernible as a ‘Sorceress’ number through the omission of distortion and growls. The band have always revelled in a quiet/loud dichotomy and it still succeeds here as the record’s high dynamic range demands you listen. Every nuance, every crevice explored by Joakim Svalberg’s keyboards pricks the ears with a flurry of fuzz.
Opeth are still a heavy, relevant band in 2016. ‘Heritage’ had genuinely spine-snapping moments, as did ‘Pale Communion’. But with ‘Sorceress’, the Stockholm five-piece have flattened yet another career-defining goal: they’ve delivered an album, as Opeth 2.0, that admirably stands behind their ‘classic’ sound.
No, it’s not as good as ‘Blackwater Park’. Nothing is. Yet the catchiness, heaviness and innovation of old have been captured without compromising Opeth’s artistic vision, further sidestepping their death metal roots without ‘selling out’ or whatever else you might pretend they did to hurt you. ‘Sorceress’ is indeed a strange brew. You might not like it, but you’ll remember it.
Opeth Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Sat November 19 2016 - LONDON SSE Arena Wembley
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