In all honesty, how are these two songs that much different from anything else they've done? What makes these songs stand out more than something on Ghost Reveries? Aside from the blasts with clean vocals, I don't really hear anything completely new or different. It's just more good Opeth.
I mean, take The Lotus Eater for instance. The entire structure of this song is breathtakingly fresh. At one moment you're listening to crushing blastbeats and some more traditional death riffs, 12 seconds you're hearing some extremely melodic riffs with druming that is sort of doing it's own thing... 12 seconds later you're back at the blastbeats, and then a little guitar scale fill comes in, back at the blast beats with this fill being played over it as a lead, with an odd rhythm guitar line... And then a traditional solo over something. Then you're brought into a slower atmospheric pace... And then the keyboard takes over big time. And you're back into the heavy for a bit, something really reminiscent of Still Life, and then you fade out into voices.
It's fucking odd.
Then take Ghost of Perdition... Heavy riffs, drumming for 2 minutes, nothing much going on, slow section with an acoustic guitar for 2 minutes, progressive hard rock section for 2 minutes, nothing really interesting going on, nothing different than what we've heard over and over from the band since 2000... 2 minutes of that, back to some heavy riffs, minute later, the acoustics are back with a solo over it, then back to the heavy growls, then a bit of acoustics, heavy closing.
Baying of the hounds:
Heavy riff 2 minutes, progressive rock going on for 2 minutes, samey riff going on throughout... solo with a little bit of a weird harmony at the end... etc..etc. etc.
Just follows that formula the entire way... mixes up a bit sometimes, but really, bores the hell out of me.
