Evolution in Songwriting

[kno talint]

yea ozzfest line up was pretty good this year...too bad it cost like 239834958093485 dollars...anywho eh i dont see how catchy and ear friendly is bad...its all relative...for example from ride the lightning to the black album....it got more ear friendly , BUT it was a step back..not forward. NOW, from orchid to still life, once again, it got more ear friendly, BUT in this case it, (IMO) was a step way forward in the sense that the music got more complex, the music flows better, its still brutal, yet makes you wanna sing along, its all around better. and if a band doesnt change then not only would they get bored, thier fans would too. if opeth kept making albums that sounded like still life or orchid, or w.e. you like, then idk, wouldnt that get boring?

 

[Ermz]

Well yes, Necramentia... bands tend to usually start with a vision and their own unique form of song writing. Alot of bands are fresh and have something to prove, so they go out and do their own thing.. which is why I think that usually debut albums are the most flavoured... you can feel the ambition pouring from the music.

As time progresses most musicians kind of conform to the general ear-friendly, song structure standards, much as Opeth did in Still Life. Orchid and Morningrise were total chaos, yet they still held a melodic cohesiveness (well, I guess you can bar Black Rose from that) and that was really fresh to me... the music was so spontaneous and non-average.

With Prometheus, this kind of becomes a double-edged sword. In that album Emperor opted for more ear-friendly song structures, while at the time stylizing the music to be almost un-listenable by the average person. The amount of dual-guitar work and insanely heavy drumming in that album is simply awesome, nothing less... yet at the same time they opted for more traditional song structures.

I agree with you when you say that as time wears on and artists become more experienced at writing music, they all opt to make their music conform to some standard. Nobody is unique for that long.

 

[Demilich]

The thing that's been bugging me lately with post-SL Opeth is that beginning on Blackwater Park, I can't seem to shake this feeling that the heavy/soft/heavy/soft thing has become a cliche, or is used simply because that's what Opeth is. Maybe it isn't even intentional, but that's what I hear when I listen to BWP or Deliverance. They've still done some great stuff, but it feels like whatever's inspired them to do what they did before is gone.

On Still Life and before, I feel that the transitions from heavy to soft feed off of the emotion of the songs, where in many cases in BWP and Deliverance it just feels like they're doing it cause they Opeth, that's what they do. I still enjoy a listen to these albums once in a while, but I think this is what keeps me going back to the older ones much more often.

 

[Demoke]

Steven Wilson is not the guilty of anything. After so many years creating music and recording albums (4 of them is enough experience, isn't it?), Opeth is to blame if they let Steven Wilson influence them too much... that's the red thin line between production and creation. I don't know if can make myself understood with this.

And, yes, I agree their hard-soft-hard-soft song structure can become a kind of cliché and now you can even smell when they're coming with the soft stuff... The evolution, it seems, is towards an only soft record (Damnation)... and I wouldn't be much surprised if they released an all heavy one (that was what Deliverance was supposed to be, wasn't it?)... I don't know, just guessing... The Opeth I like most is the Still Life one, anyway, and I don't know if that's because Steven Wilson was not there yet, because they took their time to compose and write the coolest lyrics I've come across so far, because of the jazzy moments, because of Melinda herself... I dunno.

 

[TheFourthHorseman]

because they took their time to compose and write the coolest lyrics I've come across so far, because of the jazzy moments, because of Melinda herself... I dunno.

They didn't take the time. They've been rushing the recordings since My Arms or Still Life, can't remember. Mike happened to write some great lyrics though.
What on earth do you mean with "because of Melinda herself"?

 

[JoeVice]

pop death metal????? hmmm..... if anything, pop means popular music...so therefore, since their earlier style of music on morningrise and orchid seemed to sort of (like mikael said) fit in with the rest of the swedish music scene at the time....then they have moved away from "pop(ular) death metal"...this is all based around my opinion that they keep getting better and better in all aspects of their music...

 

[Necramentia]

that's the beauty of it, in one sense it's getting better, more mature, but in another, it's change, which can be seen as compromising of art. It's a sticky situation.

 

[Duvall]

the sound always moves toward the polished. SW's production has a really slick, polished feel to it (something about the compression..) Also, his influence on Opeth is certainly larger than it would be on a band that rehearsed together more frequently. Since Opeth basically joins all these riffs and ideas and lyrics in the studio, SW potentially had his hand in many elements (see: Death Whispered a Lullaby - notice how Mike always makes sure the audience knows the lyrics are SW, not his own?), making Opeth into a clay-like substance to be molded. Hopefully the end result is not mellow for mellow's sake, or vice versa. Hopefully it will be fully recognizable as Opeth.

As said above, music isn't getting more mainstream, rather mainstreamers' ears are more open than ever (I had a "rapper" neighbour who really enjoyed Bloodbath.. possibly because of the violent allusions . SO, maybe these people need some deathvox shoved into their brains to shake them from their mainstream shackles. Or, we can leave well enough alone. Too many Opeth fans would make US the mainstream. ew

 

[Demoke]

The reference to "Melinda herself" was just a way of talking; at the end of the day she's the only character in Opeth songs who's got an explicit name --if I'm not mistaken- and she's the mythic Melinda, the one about whom everybody seems to want to know about... By the way, "who is she?"