Controversial opinions on metal

[no country for old wainds]

skydancer is solid, the rest sucks to varying degrees.

i feel blackwater park gets bad rep from this anti-bandwagon 'well actually i mildly enjoy opeth despite their obvious and crippling flaws' thing that a lot of people seem to be feelin' these days. i mean it has some shit on it like funeral portrait, but if my arms your hearse is a good album then so is blackwater park. it's just as ghostly, just in a different way, it's more like a misty haze to me. i think people are put off by the prog associations but, man, i probably hate fucking prog more than anyone here.

i think i sort of know what you're trying to say about fafts andy, i sort of agree and disagree at the same time. give it more listens but don't let it lose you before you reach 5-7, which i think probably serve as the catalyst for appreciating the rest more, as well as being the best songs on there anyway. i think fafts builds into that 'introspection', which i tend to describe as a sense that the sun is going down from the world for the last time - a feeling that everything is coming to a close. but i also think that's kind of reductive. i think it's the most paradoxical BM album ever recorded even above HLTO; you can't call it melancholy because it's also absolutely ecstatic, you can't call it peaceful and tranquil because it jumps about frantically, you can't call it a journey nor a single-minded pursuit of a goal because it also seems to utterly suspend time, you can't say it's nostalgic because that sunset feeling is very much facing the future - every way of describing the album seems to be no more true than its opposite. it's shooting stars across a night sky, dark as pitch and blinding bright.

i also think that this intertwining of opposites is what pretty much all metal has strived for since day one, whether it's the mingling of horror with awe/wonder, harsh reality with fantasy/dreams, chaos with order, darkness with light etcetc. all art probably does this actually but i don't want to expand the sphere of this discussion really. i suppose what i'm saying is i don't understand why anyone who loves black metal wouldn't love FAFTS as they seem to me a distillation, a perfecting, of much of what BM has always wanted to be. certainly what bands like vinterland wanted to be with WMLC, a great, tasteful, evocative album which is nonetheless dwarfed by sacramentum's shadow. obviously this is all just subjective opinion and interpretation etc but i like to think reading this might inspire some people to give it more tries with as open a mind as possible. anyway ramble over.

A voice from the past will follow me until the day I die

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

That's a fairly interesting call on the search for what metal has always been ABOUT.

 

[DarkBliss]

Actually, yea, Carnage are damn bit spacier than the overwrought Dismemeber, though I can't really remember many of the songs off DR it save for the odd track. I need to give it another listen.

And yea, Blackwater Park is pretty good, if too drawn out.

Looks like this thread has become a huge baboon shoutout (what is it with me, and baboons, no idea).

 

[Blind Guardian]

Funny that you mentioned tracks 5-7 on FAFTS, no country, those plus the opener are the only ones I enjoy, the rest I could do without, since IMO they are really flat and predictable (best examplified by Blood Shall Be Spilled). I can't help but think that people who attach so incredibly much depth to the rest of the songs have that much music in them.

I also withstand that Opeth are a great band, even that every record except Watershed (which feels way too forced into experimentation) is good. All elitists always claim "I like the first three, the rest is boring", well, I have to say yet again that if you prefer Orchid to Blackwater Park for example, you don't have much music in you. And again, there's no huge stylistical difference between MAYH, Still Life, and BWP. Opeth's music, especially on BWP and D/D, also has an unique ability to speak to me about the subtleties of ordinary everyday life, whereas there's plenty of fish in the metal sea if I want to dream about comets in the sky or other subjects of overblown estethics (which I also like mind you).

 

[ArneZ]

Gothenburg for the most part is as bad as metalcore to me, I'd rather it just be purged from existence and never spoken of again.

We need melodic death metal to keep extreme metal interesting in long terms, at least I need it. And compare gothenburg to metalcore is like comparing death metal to deathcore you dumbass.

 

[Lateralus14]

...

 

[ZosKiaCvltvs]

The first 3 Opeth are good, Morningrise and My Arms, Your Hearse being my favourites. Anything after that has its moments but is mostly meh.

I could never understand why people think that Orchid is better than Still Life. The only song that ever really hit me as one of their best on it was "In Mist She Was Standing", and saying that I do feel it drags on far too long. "The Apostle in Triumph" was also pretty good, but really doesn't compare to most of the songs off of Still Life.

I totally agree with MAYH and Morningrise being their best though.

 

[TheInsane]

We need melodic death metal to keep extreme metal interesting in long terms, at least I need it. And compare gothenburg to metalcore is like comparing death metal to deathcore you dumbass.

I never cared for the Gothburg sound. I never understood why people were raving about In Flames and I still dont (new or old). I do appreciate some melodic death metal though. While being a band that had much ups and downs Edge of Sanity did produce some damn fine melodic death metal for example.


On the subject of Opeth I think the early stuff is good in small doses but find that it never holds up for the duration of a whole album. Blackwater Park is for me where they produced the first album I like through and through and I actually dig the latest two most of all I think. For me the keyboard player did make a huge positive difference.

 

[Lateralus14]

I do think earlier Opeth's sound in general would appeal more to extreme metal fans, but it's kind of ironic that those albums are still preferred amongst a forum full of people with a fixation on Opeth's bad songwriting (those albums having the worst songwriting and all..).

 

[Thanatcs]

Blackwater Park is my favorite Opeth album. Most of their new stuff is good in small doses. I love their entire discography up until BWP unconditionally.

 

[VelociBrad]

We need melodic death metal to keep extreme metal interesting in long terms, at least I need it. And compare gothenburg to metalcore is like comparing death metal to deathcore you dumbass.

Gothenburg sucks. It's a horrible sub-genre.

 

[Einherjar86]

That's fine if you think that; but if you're going to compare it to something, be prepared to back that up.

 

[JGMetalhead]

Alot of Gothenburg sounds strange or shitty. I'm on the fence with those kinds of bands at times.

 

[Cronopio]

I like some deathcore, if it's br000000tal. You know what I'm sayin' ... dig?

Now you're gonna say that's perfectly fine, since deathcore isn't even metal anyway.

 

[VelociBrad]

That's fine if you think that; but if you're going to compare it to something, be prepared to back that up.

What do you want me to back up? That I think it's as bad as metalcore? I didn't say it sounds like metalcore. It said it's AS BAD AS metalcore.

The reading comprehension of some people amazes me.

 

[no country for old wainds]

That's a fairly interesting call on the search for what metal has always been ABOUT.

don't think i suggested it was a conscious aim? i don't think i was saying anything fresh and profound there either, it's almost stating the obvious

Funny that you mentioned tracks 5-7 on FAFTS, no country, those plus the opener are the only ones I enjoy, the rest I could do without, since IMO they are really flat and predictable (best examplified by Blood Shall Be Spilled). I can't help but think that people who attach so incredibly much depth to the rest of the songs have that much music in them.

I also withstand that Opeth are a great band, even that every record except Watershed (which feels way too forced into experimentation) is good. All elitists always claim "I like the first three, the rest is boring", well, I have to say yet again that if you prefer Orchid to Blackwater Park for example, you don't have much music in you. And again, there's no huge stylistical difference between MAYH, Still Life, and BWP. Opeth's music, especially on BWP and D/D, also has an unique ability to speak to me about the subtleties of ordinary everyday life, whereas there's plenty of fish in the metal sea if I want to dream about comets in the sky or other subjects of overblown estethics (which I also like mind you).

blood shall be spilled is the weakest song, very true. but i fail to see how the title track or where night surrounds me, for example, are really flat and predictable, except comparative to 5-7. are you sure you're not being harsh on these because those 3 tracks set such high standards? and i do wonder if that climactic string of songs would quite as effective without a sense that the album his built towards it from a lesser plain.

agreed on opeth basically. the contemplating nature in the forests in the moonlight by the river streams next to our parlour gimmick seems to be the only reason people like the first 2 more, makes the albums seem more 'metal'. the songwriting isn't better, i think it's probably worse.

still life i don't like because it feels contrived, affected, smug, which is a totally different issue. i mean all opeth is like that and, along with the lack of flow or taste, that's why they're not a great band, but it goes into an extra gear on SL.

 

[Dak]

I like BWP, nothing else I have sampled from their discography really grabbed me, and BWP had to grow on me as it was.

 

[Satanstoenail]

I like some deathcore, if it's br000000tal. You know what I'm sayin' ... dig?

Now you're gonna say that's perfectly fine, since deathcore isn't even metal anyway.

That's perfectly fine

 

[ArneZ]

I like some deathcore, if it's br000000tal. You know what I'm sayin' ... dig?

Now you're gonna say that's perfectly fine, since deathcore isn't even metal anyway.

Despised Icon is fucking awsome and destroys other bands in its genre, and they are for sure metal as fuck.

And for controversial opinion, Job for A Cowboys Ruination is a better death metal album then Cannibal Corpse`s Evisceration Plague.

 

[Omni]

I think that the majority of Opeth isn't worth listening to, beyond the very rare moments where they occasionally write something kind of cool. Most of their music meanders and goes nowhere unless you count trying to appear musically diverse in your transitions as a musical direction.

Their first two albums are kind of amateurish, but they definitely come off as a bit more charming and authentic than anything else that they've released. Opeth gets progressively worse and much farther from their roots as a somewhat credible metal band with each new album that they release.

I liked them a lot more when I first got into metal, but I just seem them as shallow and unimaginative nowadays. There are plenty of bands that know what kind of music they want to play and understand that there's more to writing an interesting song than predictable variations of light and heavy parts, so there's no point in listening to Opeth.

I'm not even going to really touch the comments that were made about people disliking later Opeth not knowing much about music, because those aren't really worth justifying with a response, even if it's an insult.