GMD Poll: Opeth’s Discography Ranked
- Thread starter crimsonfloyd
- Start date
no country for old wainds
Active Member
- Nov 23, 2002
- 26,680
- 9,655
- 113
1) My Arms Your Hearse
located between the naive romanticism of their early work and their long and tortured journey up their own asses going forward, their third record brought the best of both worlds. the loud-quiet, clean-growl dualities are as organically blended as they'd ever get, the melodies are at their most understated and ambiguous, while passages of repetition are elevated by variation—the quadruple snare in ‘april ethereal’ is a perfect example right off the bat. there’s a lame gimmick of ending each song with the title of the next, but that gimmick is also evidence that they’re more interested in linking passages together around a concept this time, and what results is the previous jarring transitions getting supplanted by some semblance of flow, dareisay even a sustained mood or coherent emotional journey. there are highlights aplenty here; ‘april ethereal’ and ‘the amen corner’ build to breathtaking climaxes, 'when' is some of the best work of their careers up until the borderline abysmal climax nearly ruins it, there’s the build up and release of “the celestial touch...”, and best of all the monstrously potent ‘demon of the fall’, which evokes a wounded, enraged supernatural entity as well as anything. no other opeth album offers more shivers down the spine, or less reasons to cringe.
2) Morningrise
there’s an elemental quality to opeth’s first two records that’s lost on subsequent releases—it made sense that they subsequently named an album after a comus lyric. it’s just unfortunate that they can’t get out of their own way and let the music flow and breathe the way it needs. opeth are often slammed for their cut-and-paste approach to songwriting, and nowhere is that more evident than here; a sizeable portion of passages here could be randomly swapped around without impacting the quality of the album at all, such is their arbitrary placement. they’re even divided by silences at times because even the band knows they don’t fit together, and this inevitably provides an obstacle to immersion. still, it’s their second best album because of the volume and range of evocative ideas, and the aforementioned qualities that bring a kind of purity of emotion they’d never show again. ‘the night and the silent water’ has a particularly high quality ratio, and the “shadows skulk at my coming” portion of ‘advent’ is iconic. even ‘nectar’ isn’t as weak as i’d remembered; the ridiculous indulgence of ‘black rose immortal’ and the dreary ‘to bid you farewell’ may be harder for me to abide nowadays.
3) Blackwater Park
this is the “mature” album following the hysterical gothic melodrama of still life, an attempt to be more cultured and restrained, and like many such endeavours there’s something rather stuffy and anemic about it which heralds a decline, even if the album itself is still pretty good. there’s nothing quite like the first three minutes of ‘the leper affinity’, an introduction of such thrilling drama (culminating in, let's be real, one of the all time great riffs) that what follows can only disappoint. still, ‘bleak’ manages to survive its rather canned exoticism and a ludicrous jazzy solo to attain something powerful in its totality, ‘dirge for november’ is refreshingly minimalist and unified by opeth’s standards if a little meandering and overlong, and the title track is rather good as well. then you have the soulless ballad ‘harvest’, or the laughable groove riff at the centre of ‘the funeral portrait’, and far too many bland, wishy-washy clean-vocal sections throughout which betray the influence of notorious hack steven wilson (although, to be fair, his production is exemplary here).
4) Still Life
like my arms your hearse this is another gothic ghost story concept album with sprinklings of victorian romance, but the atmosphere is a lot more forced this time. they try to fit too many notes into the heavier sections, get way too sappy and saccharine in the leads, and there simply isn't enough quality control or actual songwriting. it starts real well, though, the first three songs awash with tension, demonic intensity and hushed yearning, albeit bordering on cheese. up to that point it’s their second best album, but the potential is quickly wasted, from the dreaded ‘moonlapse vertigo’, which genuinely flirts with becoming a porno soundtrack at times, to ‘serenity painted death’, which is good for about 90 seconds before segueing into their most embarrassing attempt at sounding aggro, skating the edges of mallcore (or immolation-lite if i’m being generous) until a wah-wah solo kicks in and the horse is dead for sure and you just want them to stop flogging. ‘white cluster’ is an interminable, haphazard piece of shit that even opeth fans don’t care about, while ‘face of melinda’ isn’t really one of their best ballads either despite the good climax, seeming to go on for-fucking-ever before it finally gets where it’s going, with more of that cringy pseudo-jazz noodling for middle aged men in slippers. shame.
5) Damnation
opeth were always capable of writing simple, affecting songs when they wanted to, and it was refreshing when they finally decided to make a full album of them, albeit one that contains no metal. as if we didn’t know already, damnation confirmed that those “metal’s answer to king crimson” tags were way off the mark; at this point of their careers they were more indebted to camel by way of porcupine tree. this is a pleasant collection of atmospheric prog tunes, but not particularly memorable. it’s too much of a homogeneous mood piece, too dreary and ponderous, and nobody in the seventies would’ve paid it any mind at all. i am rather a fan of the basslines on this album though, and ‘in my time of need’ and ‘to rid the disease’ are my favourite tunes partly for that reason; on the flipside, i’ve never understood the fascination with ‘windowpane’ at all, and some of the others are impossible to remember despite my having probably heard them thirty times.
6) Deliverance
the irony is that opeth’s heaviest, darkest, eeriest album is carried by the best ballad of their careers. the rest fares less well. needless repetition is the order of the day here, and it’s no more welcome than the constant left turns of their early material. this one’s also their first proper foray into meatheaded chugging and overproduced drums, while furthering BWP’s eschewal of emotion to the point when even as an opeth fanboy i was finding it hard to latch onto anything. i view this as the polar opposite to still life: a low ceiling high floor kinda record that it’s hard to feel anything for, positively or negatively.
7) Orchid
i like this one more in theory than i do in practice. it’s a nocturnal album with a light touch, a moonlit forest with no one around. it may be their most fantastical, least human record, which is in its favour. but it’s also just kind of... flat. wimpy, even. it’s desperately in need of some dynamics, some extra layers, some momentum. there’s too much wallowing in atmospherics, too much repetition, too little to distinguish between songs. my attention always ends up wandering.
8) Ghost Reveries
this is where i checked out. i'm sure they've done worse since then, and i dimly recall hearing some of it, but fortunately i'm not obliged to rank any further.
------
for good and ill, there's nothing quite like this band. nobody really sounds like them, and yet none of their albums really sound like one another either, each having its own distinct identity. they can be utterly fantastic and utterly awful, sometimes in the space of a minute. only a handful of metal bands attain such dramatic power, and few are so capable of deflating such moments like a wet fart. i still love them, i guess. and i still think they fucking suck.
located between the naive romanticism of their early work and their long and tortured journey up their own asses going forward, their third record brought the best of both worlds. the loud-quiet, clean-growl dualities are as organically blended as they'd ever get, the melodies are at their most understated and ambiguous, while passages of repetition are elevated by variation—the quadruple snare in ‘april ethereal’ is a perfect example right off the bat. there’s a lame gimmick of ending each song with the title of the next, but that gimmick is also evidence that they’re more interested in linking passages together around a concept this time, and what results is the previous jarring transitions getting supplanted by some semblance of flow, dareisay even a sustained mood or coherent emotional journey. there are highlights aplenty here; ‘april ethereal’ and ‘the amen corner’ build to breathtaking climaxes, 'when' is some of the best work of their careers up until the borderline abysmal climax nearly ruins it, there’s the build up and release of “the celestial touch...”, and best of all the monstrously potent ‘demon of the fall’, which evokes a wounded, enraged supernatural entity as well as anything. no other opeth album offers more shivers down the spine, or less reasons to cringe.
2) Morningrise
there’s an elemental quality to opeth’s first two records that’s lost on subsequent releases—it made sense that they subsequently named an album after a comus lyric. it’s just unfortunate that they can’t get out of their own way and let the music flow and breathe the way it needs. opeth are often slammed for their cut-and-paste approach to songwriting, and nowhere is that more evident than here; a sizeable portion of passages here could be randomly swapped around without impacting the quality of the album at all, such is their arbitrary placement. they’re even divided by silences at times because even the band knows they don’t fit together, and this inevitably provides an obstacle to immersion. still, it’s their second best album because of the volume and range of evocative ideas, and the aforementioned qualities that bring a kind of purity of emotion they’d never show again. ‘the night and the silent water’ has a particularly high quality ratio, and the “shadows skulk at my coming” portion of ‘advent’ is iconic. even ‘nectar’ isn’t as weak as i’d remembered; the ridiculous indulgence of ‘black rose immortal’ and the dreary ‘to bid you farewell’ may be harder for me to abide nowadays.
3) Blackwater Park
this is the “mature” album following the hysterical gothic melodrama of still life, an attempt to be more cultured and restrained, and like many such endeavours there’s something rather stuffy and anemic about it which heralds a decline, even if the album itself is still pretty good. there’s nothing quite like the first three minutes of ‘the leper affinity’, an introduction of such thrilling drama (culminating in, let's be real, one of the all time great riffs) that what follows can only disappoint. still, ‘bleak’ manages to survive its rather canned exoticism and a ludicrous jazzy solo to attain something powerful in its totality, ‘dirge for november’ is refreshingly minimalist and unified by opeth’s standards if a little meandering and overlong, and the title track is rather good as well. then you have the soulless ballad ‘harvest’, or the laughable groove riff at the centre of ‘the funeral portrait’, and far too many bland, wishy-washy clean-vocal sections throughout which betray the influence of notorious hack steven wilson (although, to be fair, his production is exemplary here).
4) Still Life
like my arms your hearse this is another gothic ghost story concept album with sprinklings of victorian romance, but the atmosphere is a lot more forced this time. they try to fit too many notes into the heavier sections, get way too sappy and saccharine in the leads, and there simply isn't enough quality control or actual songwriting. it starts real well, though, the first three songs awash with tension, demonic intensity and hushed yearning, albeit bordering on cheese. up to that point it’s their second best album, but the potential is quickly wasted, from the dreaded ‘moonlapse vertigo’, which genuinely flirts with becoming a porno soundtrack at times, to ‘serenity painted death’, which is good for about 90 seconds before segueing into their most embarrassing attempt at sounding aggro, skating the edges of mallcore (or immolation-lite if i’m being generous) until a wah-wah solo kicks in and the horse is dead for sure and you just want them to stop flogging. ‘white cluster’ is an interminable, haphazard piece of shit that even opeth fans don’t care about, while ‘face of melinda’ isn’t really one of their best ballads either despite the good climax, seeming to go on for-fucking-ever before it finally gets where it’s going, with more of that cringy pseudo-jazz noodling for middle aged men in slippers. shame.
5) Damnation
opeth were always capable of writing simple, affecting songs when they wanted to, and it was refreshing when they finally decided to make a full album of them, albeit one that contains no metal. as if we didn’t know already, damnation confirmed that those “metal’s answer to king crimson” tags were way off the mark; at this point of their careers they were more indebted to camel by way of porcupine tree. this is a pleasant collection of atmospheric prog tunes, but not particularly memorable. it’s too much of a homogeneous mood piece, too dreary and ponderous, and nobody in the seventies would’ve paid it any mind at all. i am rather a fan of the basslines on this album though, and ‘in my time of need’ and ‘to rid the disease’ are my favourite tunes partly for that reason; on the flipside, i’ve never understood the fascination with ‘windowpane’ at all, and some of the others are impossible to remember despite my having probably heard them thirty times.
6) Deliverance
the irony is that opeth’s heaviest, darkest, eeriest album is carried by the best ballad of their careers. the rest fares less well. needless repetition is the order of the day here, and it’s no more welcome than the constant left turns of their early material. this one’s also their first proper foray into meatheaded chugging and overproduced drums, while furthering BWP’s eschewal of emotion to the point when even as an opeth fanboy i was finding it hard to latch onto anything. i view this as the polar opposite to still life: a low ceiling high floor kinda record that it’s hard to feel anything for, positively or negatively.
7) Orchid
i like this one more in theory than i do in practice. it’s a nocturnal album with a light touch, a moonlit forest with no one around. it may be their most fantastical, least human record, which is in its favour. but it’s also just kind of... flat. wimpy, even. it’s desperately in need of some dynamics, some extra layers, some momentum. there’s too much wallowing in atmospherics, too much repetition, too little to distinguish between songs. my attention always ends up wandering.
8) Ghost Reveries
this is where i checked out. i'm sure they've done worse since then, and i dimly recall hearing some of it, but fortunately i'm not obliged to rank any further.
------
for good and ill, there's nothing quite like this band. nobody really sounds like them, and yet none of their albums really sound like one another either, each having its own distinct identity. they can be utterly fantastic and utterly awful, sometimes in the space of a minute. only a handful of metal bands attain such dramatic power, and few are so capable of deflating such moments like a wet fart. i still love them, i guess. and i still think they fucking suck.
1. my arms your hearse
2. morningrise
3. blackwater park
4. still life
5. damnation
6. deliverance
7. orchid
8. ghost reveries
2. morningrise
3. blackwater park
4. still life
5. damnation
6. deliverance
7. orchid
8. ghost reveries
Phylactery
Active Member
Nice, except you have Orchid way too low! Did you relisten to it before this?
No matter how much Mikael shits on metal, Opeth really need their metal sections. Without them their songs are often flat and dull.
No matter how much Mikael shits on metal, Opeth really need their metal sections. Without them their songs are often flat and dull.
no country for old wainds
Active Member
- Nov 23, 2002
- 26,680
- 9,655
- 113
repeatedly yeah, i was surprised to be so ambivalent myself but i guess i never liked it that much. might deserve fifth spot but the top four are pretty locked in for me.
Masterpieces:
1. Morningrise
2. My Arms Your Hearse
3. Still Life
4. Orchid
Really damn good:
5. Ghost Reveries
6. Blackwater Park
Solid:
7. Damnation
8. Deliverance
Treading water:
9. Watershed
Hey, ever heard of this band called Jethro Tull?
10. Pale Communion
11. Sorceress
12. Heritage
1. Morningrise
2. My Arms Your Hearse
3. Still Life
4. Orchid
Really damn good:
5. Ghost Reveries
6. Blackwater Park
Solid:
7. Damnation
8. Deliverance
Treading water:
9. Watershed
Hey, ever heard of this band called Jethro Tull?
10. Pale Communion
11. Sorceress
12. Heritage
Last edited:
CiG
Harbinger of Metal
Sophii
lil' rat
1.) Orchid
2.) Still Life
3.) Ghost Reveries
4.) Blackwater Park
5.) My Arms, Your Hearse
6.) Morningrise
7.) Deliverence
8.) Damnation
9.) Watershed
10.) Heritage
11.) Sorceress
12.) Pale Communion
2.) Still Life
3.) Ghost Reveries
4.) Blackwater Park
5.) My Arms, Your Hearse
6.) Morningrise
7.) Deliverence
8.) Damnation
9.) Watershed
10.) Heritage
11.) Sorceress
12.) Pale Communion
Last edited:
Sophii
lil' rat
Orchid is probably one of the coolest and in depth releases in Swedish metal. Not as in depth and perfect as anything by Edge of Insanity though, since Mikael worships Dan Swano.
Sophii
lil' rat
Sophii
lil' rat
TechnicalBarbarity
Poser Disposer
Sophii
lil' rat
Opeth is really better in their earliest years. Super adventurous and willing to cram insane ideas together. Morningrise is them at their peak of using black metal elements thrown together with progressive death metal and European doom metal influence.
Allfader
Kvelding
11) Heritage (2011)
Average points per vote: 2.54/12
Average points per vote: 2.54/12
crimsonfloyd said:
9) Watershed (2008)
Average points per vote: 3.2/12
Average points per vote: 3.2/12
8) Damnation (2003)
Average points per vote: 5.4/12
Average points per vote: 5.4/12
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