On Average Here, Blackwater Park Gets The Most Negative Comments - Why?

[Monsterxman]

Many excellent posts here.

BWP to me is good.
Nothing less, but nothing more.

Sure it has some fantastic parts, but it's by no means a masterpiece in my eyes. In fact, I, like many others have an extremely hard time listening to the entire album in one sitting. It's way too predictable and I don't appreciate the layered sounds (which as someone else said does sound similiar to a lot of the American metal bands). I also prefer the older equipment (Marshall amps!!!) and 70's analog recording gear that was used on the earlier albums. To me there is more character in the earlier productions (but then again I generally prefer 70's music)... The earlier albums have a much more classic feel to them and better overall vibe and complexity. I have serious doubts as to whether Opeth is capable anymore of creating a song as long, diverse and/or as compelling (the important part!) as anything they did on Morningrise... Especially, if they insist on continuing to use Steve Wilson (can you saying boring) style of production. Bands mature and change and we must accept that, but rarely in the history of metal music and music in general does a band get better after 3-5 great albums... I miss the acoustic interludes of the earlier albums...
But that's just me I guess...

 

[LambOfGod]

As of now, BWP is my fav album but all time I think it is MAYH

 

[Till Fjalls]

Listening back to older material like morningrise or orchid after BWP, it just sounds so simple. As IanDork stated, the attention to detail on BWP is just stunning.

Oh well, I'm just glad I can appreciate the album they way I do.

Well, that may be true, to an extent, but the way I see it, the abums can't really be judged the same way. BWP may have had a lot of attention paid to detail, but the attention is paid to small frag,ents of songs. Each part within a song is thought out, and the subtle layers and meldodies seem more thought out, more planned. In that sense, each song serves as a more fulfilling experience, but the album as a whole does not flow because of it. Each song seems to be treated a s a seperate entity, and they do it well. The complexities in BWP seem to be within the confines of a single song as well, with the number of odd time signatures and syncoopated guitar lines. However, it seems to be a simpler "complexity", if you know what I mean, in comparison to their earlier works. It lacks a certain harmonic depth. And a lot of the attention to detail on BWp seems to come from Wilson saying "instead of using three guitars playing different lines, just use two playing the same thing". That's fine and dandy, but it doesn't sound like opeth to me, at least not the opeth I've come to know.

To me Opeth is about the semi-muddy production, in which you hear a bunch of melodies and riffs, but can't quite grasp them all in one listen. BWP is the opposite of that to me. As I said before, it sounds more american. it's stripped down, with a lot of attention paid to little details that matter to a producer more than a songwriter. This is not to bash the album in any way, but just to show what I hear in it. The older stuff may be simpler in some ways, but it is more complex in other ways. I guess it all depends on what you listen for in music.

 

[Hondo]

To me Opeth is about the semi-muddy production, in which you hear a bunch of melodies and riffs, but can't quite grasp them all in one listen. BWP is the opposite of that to me.

I find that BWP is the 2nd-muddiest one, with MAYH in front. The guitars are stuck right on top of each other (no panning usually) and they're noisy, so it's hard to pick out notes in a lot of places. I think as an album it has the most going on at once. It's definately not stripped down as you said.

 

[COnsiderateApathy]

I miss the acoustic interludes of the earlier albums...

an acoustic interlude, like, oh, I donno, 'For Absent Friends'?

 

[Bleakest Harvest]

BWP has some of the greatest songs of all time on it, Harvest, The Drapery Falls, the title track. But the thing with BWP, compared to say, Still Life, is that it is somewhat

disjointed

I refer especially to the likes of Dirge For November. It sounds as if they wrote it very quickly just to frill space or something, its far too repetetive to be a proper Opeth song.
The same applies, although to a much lesser extent, to Funeral Portrait.
If Opeth ahd come up with another couple of songs on a par with The Drapery..., or The Leper Affinity, then BWP would have been their greatest moment.

It's in contrast to Still Life because that album works as a cohesive whole, each song being every bit as compelling as the last, there are simply no points in Still Life that I might want to hit the skip button on my cd player, whereas there are on BWP

Deliverance is also very consistent, not quite as great as Still Life, but excellent nonetheless and my 2nd favourite Opeth album.

 

[GreatPhoenix]

Bleak and The Drapery Falls (Bumblefoot Edits) are the songs that got me into Opeth. Bleak was my favorite for a long time. I began to buy all their CDs and Blackwater Park began to slip from my favorites area. I still love it. A Funeral Portrait is now my favorite heavy song on that CD and I love all the soft songs equally, but Bleak and The Drapery Falls aren't that impressive to me anymore. I still love Blackwater Park and I'd NEVER say it sucked... I do notice a lot of shit that it's getting here and it bothers me. I just don't think most people have given it a chance to grow on them. I certainly don't think Opeth have sold out with it... like all of their albums they were just being experimental and in experimentalism there's bound to be a few let-downs. Expect the same with Damnation, I do. But as Opeth being my favorite damned band I'm going to stick with them anyway.

 

[Mariner]

well this is an interesting discussion. it seems many people 'who are saying they dislike BP' dont have the guts to defend their vision of it because they know somehow they cant argue about it with decent matters.
now BP is more complex for certain. on the earlier records both guitars are often playing the same passages. On SL an BP they are more duelling with each other. what makes it more interesting for me.
It might be right saying that BP is the black album of Opeth; the most controversial album because its the most popular.
I bought Morningrise an MAYH recently and I must say Morningrise is really asskicking. MAYH is my least favourite so far, but i need to get onto it (listening to it right now, its really blasting through the speakers )

 

[squeegee your third eye]

Some concrete reasons I like BWP best (keep in mind I love al the albums):
* Clean vocals ever-improving, with a rich emotive tone and solid pictch; much preferred to Morningrise, which are more hesitant and off-key, though I understand how fans might like how their quiet sound blends with the mood.
* The wall-of-sound guitars are better articulated with more clarity. MAYH especially is a bit blurred together.
* The leads have a richer, fatter tone
* The bass is higher in the mix with a beautiful low tone (though I do appreciate Mornigrise's fretless bass work very much too)
*Wilson studio touches add more variety to overall sonic pallette without fundamentally altering the band's sound.
* Production has more "punch"'; For example, you can really *feel* it when the riff kicks in in the title
track. Previous productions sometimes sounded "samey" and monotonous.
* Each track has a strong individual identity. Previous albums blend together a bit more. For example "Dirge for November" sounds like no other song on the album; it's not my favorite, but provides contrast. "Funeral Portrait" & "Bleak" begin with a distinctive riff unique to the album. I could go on. In short, to my ears, each track on BWP stand on their own as individuals. The songs on MAYH & SL, great as they are, are more similiar to one another than different, apart from the acoustic tracks. On those albums it took me longer to figure out the different tracks than on BWP, which to me strikes the right Opethian balance between an opus that flows as one piece and one comprised of easily idenitifed individual compositions.

Those are just a few reasons I can think of without launching into an essay. And I'm not slagging the others. We all have to have a favorite, don't we?

 

[JesterOfDeath]

Interesting since this was the first Opeth cd i bought and still hail it as my second favorite!

 

[yourdeadgroom]

I just don't think most people have given it a chance to grow on them.

Is anyone else sick of people saying this when they hear someone say they don't like a particular album?

Just wondering

 

[pac1288]

I remember the first song I heard from Blackwater Park it was the Drapery Falls, it was the radio edit that was available on Opeth's official site and I just thought it was amazing.. honestly. It was the kind of change that I wanted from the band and it was at the perfect time, of course it had some similarities to there previous works but at the same time it had like this uniqueness that just captivated me, I had always known deep down that Opeth had the ability to create something truly special like The drapery Falls and it was just a great feeling hearing it.

The same goes with the whole album. The Leper Affinity, Bleak, Harvest, The Drapery Falls, Dirge For November, Blackwater Park, Funeral portrait, are all amazing songs to me. The only song that I had trouble with was Funeral Portrait, I didn't like it at first, it took me a great while to get used to it and for it to grow on me which it did but it took like ten months until I started liking the song. For those people out there that don't really Blackwater Park I understand them it takes a certain personality to like it, for example Dirge For November there's people out there like me that totally love this song and the reason being is becuase it has this tranquil quality to it, this distinct-ness and atmosphere that just totally draws me in, to me the whole song goes together perfectly and I just love that acoustic piece that flows towards the end of a song. Then theres the people that can't tolerate this song which I understand and its probably because there not into this kind of stuff like some other people,simply put its just doesn't go with there persona therefore they hate it which makes perfect sense.

 

[pac1288]

Hey look everyone my old avatar is back, yay!

I guess it was stored somewhere in the UM database before the transition where the avatar is being hosted. I remember when this site was having some financial issues and it got to the point to where we had to host avatars ourselves(which I didn't bother doing because I was too lazy to do so) in order for them to appear under one's username, and now that UM has implemented a similar system(aside from the change in format) like the previous one before the cost cutting measures the avatars that some of us were using during that time have re-surfaced(but I think its just for those people that didn't bother getting a new one after losing the one they already had like myself)

Anyway thats all, just felt like mentioning that, thank you for your time.

 

[Nico16]

If people don't like it it's prolly just cause it's not as heavy as the others.

Not as heavy as the others??! Only MAYH and Deliverance are heavier! Still Live has Serenity Painted Death, a quite heavy song, but the rest of the album is like the material on BWP, just with more clean vocals than on BWP. Still Live has TWO songs with clean-vocals-only - BWP has just one (plus Patterns in the Ivy, which has no vocals at all). And if you compare BWP to the first two albums in terms of heaviness - those albums may have even less clean vocals than BWP (especially Orchid), but they're more calm, due to the drumming - BWP is agressive as fuck compared to that.

 

[Dev]

BWP it's THE album . But it doesn't mean it's the best or my fav. , it just means it was something really important in Opeth's carrer.Howeveer it's still the album that got me into them so it's still in my Opeth top 3 (Once again Funeral Portrait solo really owns)

 

[Brian T. Ghammet]

How can a band sell out with a song so completely heavy as the title track to BWP? Bleak and The Drapery Falls are so perfect it is unbelievable! I've caught myself saying I have my favorite Opeth album a lot; one day it's Still Life and then it's Orchid! I'm sick of trying to choose a favorite. EVERY ALBUM OPETH PUTS OUT IS PERFECT!!!