Opeth - Heritage : opinions

[MasterOLightning]

I guess I won't be checking this out, considering I didn't enjoy Watershed or the first song that leaked at all.

 

[Krigloch the Furious]

boring band

 

[Hubster]

Real Swedish progressive rock.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReB2D2V-sM8"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReB2D2V-sM8[/ame]

 

[EternalMetal]

As a long time Opeth listener I was excited to see that this album finally leaked. Ive only listened to it once, but I cant think of anything good to say about it; Heritage was flat, boring, and derivative with half-assed song writing. The drums are played like an unimaginative drum machine and the guitars have an equally dead tone to them as well. I dont really see this album growing on me either.

I'm absolute shock. This is way WAY worse than I thought it would be.

When they announced the direction of the record, I was open to the idea. Their progressive parts in the past (ie previous to and including Damnation) have been great.

But this... it just goes nowhere. There's no direction on Heritage at all. There's no "feel". You know when you hear a great record, you feel you're in the mind of the band, looking about, exploring? Well, none of that here.

There's no flow, no logic in the record. It's disjointed. Each song does not have a character which makes it discernable from the next. Heritage is just a mash of ideas. And boring, shallow, half-conceived ones at that.

The lyrics are immature and "mainstream". The usage of a more advanced style of English, the poetry - all gone. Incredibly lacklustre, so little emotion. Sentences, phrases - Opeth records, up to D&D, used to be full of mental imagery painted with Akerfeldt's fantastic use of words. No longer.

I've bashed Opeth since GR, everyone knows that. Yes, I think the material since then really is terrible, but this... THIS is a huge step down from even those albums, because at least on those there were moments of greatness.

On Heritage, there is none.

Attrocious, were I to be blunt. I can't even rate it, it's that bad.

^^ This. Exactly how I feel regarding the band and the new album.

 

[RavageTheKingdom]

Since i've heard it's prog rock I doubt i'll ever even check it out.

 

[Hubster]

Well finally, it appears that people are realising that Opeth have been shit since D&D. Check out the comments too.

Angry Metal Guy Review.

Disclaimer: Knowing how to review this record has been very difficult for me because I’m a big fan of the band and I have no desire to try make my opinion seem bigger than the band’s work. I understand my subjective position as a reviewer very well. But this record suffers from pretty major issues that it make it very difficult for me to enjoy and that show off the weakness of the band in its current incarnation. I am aware that there will be a good amount of whining and gnashing of teeth over this review, and you’re welcome to it. Just remember that I 1) am not invested in Opeth playing death metal; 2) like plenty of bands that have changed their sounds; and 3) enjoy progressive and abstract music of all stripes very much.

Opeth - HeritageIt’s hard to believe that we’re actually looking at Opeth‘s 10th full length studio record now in 2011. It’s amazing how the little progressive death metal band that could is a global powerhouse of extreme and progressive music that is signed to one of the biggest labels in the metal world. Heritage was billed as a bit of a ‘look backwards,’ in a sense, with main man Åkerfeldt saying that he thought extreme metal was boring and that he has thought that for a while and so this was going to be something else. As a long time fan (who has regularly been called a fanboy), I think it’s obvious to me that Opeth was outgrowing their roots. While I think that Ghost Reveries is a genius album, Watershed was definitely not. It felt uninspired and rushed. So the big question for me coming into all of this was: would having more time and freedom make Heritage feel fresh? Would it be a record that would change Opeth for good—and also for the better?

Heritage is very much as Åkerfeldt said in a recent interview, it is a progressive rock album that sounds very much like its biggest influence actually is mainly Opeth. Over time, Åkerfeldt has crafted a sound that is unique to the band and that has moved them into the limelight. There is a cadence and melodic structure to Opeth riffs that just feels very Opeth. The linear fashion of writing songs is also something that, nowadays is commonplace, but that has long been associated with Mikael’s writing style. Songs that are often more like movements than traditionally structured tracks works well in death metal, which is so heavily riff-based. This made for epic soundscapes that were at once exciting and interesting, but also had the ability to be fragile and beautiful. It was a sound that worked for the band and launched them into the stratosphere popularitywise.

But while Heritage retains Opeth‘s voice (metaphysically and physically, of course), it does not retain its genius and I think this has to do with the fact that the songwriting on Heritage feels almost lazy, but certainly underdeveloped. A better way to say this might be that Heritage is full of great riffs and ideas, but not many very good songs. Instead, the listener is left feeling like the writing process was just to take a bunch of ideas and to hamfistedly shove them into these somewhat linear songs, often times with little regard as to key, time signature or context and feel. While this could seem “progressive,” for me it doesn’t feel so progressive as disjointed. A case in point is the single “The Devil’s Orchard” where, instead of writing a transition on guitar, keyboards are used to transfer out of a very cool verse/chorus iteration in a pretty jarring, unrelated fashion before trying to segue back to the main “chorus” theme at the end randomly.

Opeth 2011This kind of patchwork writing with bad or jarring transitions is basically the mark of Heritage. The same thing happens in “I Feel the Dark,” “Nepenthe,” “Famine,” and “The Lines in My Hand.” It even happens in my favorite songs on the record, which would definitely be “Slither” and “Folklore.” The only tracks that don’t suffer from this are “Heritage,” which is a piano track and the outro “Marrow of the Earth” which features Wishbone Ash or Iron Maiden-style guitar harmonies, which is similar to “Ending Credits” from Damnation or “Epilogue” from My Arms, Your Hearse.

In spite of all of this, there are some really great moments in these songs, too. I love the first 2 minutes and 50 seconds of “Slither,” and it’s very cool riff and “Beneath the Mire” kind of drive, before it devolves into a non-related acoustic guitar part that wasn’t developed. “Famine” works with its very Jethro Tull feel, before devolving into a jam at the end that I’m not a huge fan of. ” Without the first 2 minutes of “Häxprocess” the song would have been genius, but it just sort of meanders in and then despite that the rest is really good, it feels a bit dead on arrival. “Folklore” is probably the most consistent track on the album, in my opinion, and it’s got a great Kebnekajse or Jan Johansson kind of feel to it that really hits the spot. And the band itself is playing as well or better than it ever has. Martin Axenrot is finally achieving Lopez-style jazz feel, while Mendez performs excellently on the bass. Fredrik has a number of great solos and, of course, Per’s keyboard work is the glue that holds the record together.

But beyond the obvious talent of the band, what do they leave the listener with? The record has grown on me to a certain extent since I first got it. There is arguably a “unifying feel” of the album, even if the writing is disparate and disjointed. But the whole is, unfortunately, not greater than its parts. Instead, I’d say there’s about 40 minutes of pretty good to excellent music, but a lot of bad transitions and only a couple great songs. This leaves me, frankly, aghast, as the fantastic transitions and compositions are the thing that really elevated Opeth to the level of great in my mind. If you think about the transition in “A Fair Judgement” at about 4:15 in the track or the transfer from “Pull me down again…” into the new part at 4:01 in “The Drapery Falls”. How about the end of “When”? And I could increase this list 10-fold.

So to say that Heritage is a disappointing record is almost an understatement. While I found some of things really growing on me since I started listening to it, which places it above Watershed in the pantheon, it is not a record that I think really belongs in the same breath as the band’s earlier stuff—or in the same breath as bands like Camel, Rush, Yes, King Crimson or Jethro Tull. Whether it is that the keyboards transitioning unlinked ideas has become a crutch, or that the tendency of death metal riffs to be based around an open E hid a lack of sophistication in Åkerfeldt’s writing style, Heritage exposes these problems in a way that even Watershed didn’t. And that leaves this Angry Opeth Fanboy feeling very disappointed.

 

[Lateralus14]

Ya I even like Watershed and this sucked. The intro/outro songs and the trad-metal Dio tribute song were cool, but that's what like 15% of the album?

 

[Dak]

I really liked BWP, but nothing else I've heard from Opeth has grabbed me, no good expectations for this album. Watershed was extremely meh, and if this is worse.........

 

[Blind Guardian]

Just like Watershed the whole thing just sounds incredibly forced. It sounds like he's simply decided on a sound from the beginning, rather than having an overall sound grow naturally from the junction of smaller parts.

Real Swedish progressive rock.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReB2D2V-sM8

Yes, and first and foremost, get immersed in the Swedish prog revival triumvirate from the early 90s, i.e Anekdoten, Landberk and Änglagård, 1000 times before this Opeth album. They actually made it sound honest.

 

[nizzon]

Slowly going through it. Been listening to fuckloads of Uriah Heep, Genesis, Jethro Tull and other old stuff lately - and in comparison so far, Heritage sounds incredibly empty. Fuck all atmosphere, just no depth and lots of tossy ideas.

Sigh.

Still, got a lot more left on it to hear yet...

EDIT: almost at the end now.

I'm absolute shock. This is way WAY worse than I thought it would be.

When they announced the direction of the record, I was open to the idea. Their progressive parts in the past (ie previous to and including Damnation) have been great.

But this... it just goes nowhere. There's no direction on Heritage at all. There's no "feel". You know when you hear a great record, you feel you're in the mind of the band, looking about, exploring? Well, none of that here.

There's no flow, no logic in the record. It's disjointed. Each song does not have a character which makes it discernable from the next. Heritage is just a mash of ideas. And boring, shallow, half-conceived ones at that.

The lyrics are immature and "mainstream". The usage of a more advanced style of English, the poetry - all gone. Incredibly lacklustre, so little emotion. Sentences, phrases - Opeth records, up to D&D, used to be full of mental imagery painted with Akerfeldt's fantastic use of words. No longer.

I've bashed Opeth since GR, everyone knows that. Yes, I think the material since then really is terrible, but this... THIS is a huge step down from even those albums, because at least on those there were moments of greatness.

On Heritage, there is none.

Attrocious, were I to be blunt. I can't even rate it, it's that bad.

Im just gonna quote Hubster 'cause its exactly what I feel.
Just boring shit. And I dont even like his singing.

 

[waif]

There's no flow, no logic in the record. It's disjointed. Each song does not have a character which makes it discernable from the next.

I could say this about pretty much any Opeth album. It's the thing that prevents them from actually being awesome.

 

[nizzon]

I could say this about pretty much any Opeth album. It's the thing that prevents them from actually being awesome.

Thats not true at all though. Sure their older songs are also somewhat strangely aranged, but not like this, this album is disjointed and flowless in a league of its own. The old songs had stucture and feel to the arangements, this doesnt.

 

[Stormwatch]

It's pretty amusing how Akerfeldt hated his own clean vocals so much he wanted Wilson to do them on the earlier albums, now he decides he's fucking great at it and makes a whole shitty album with his own clean vocals.

 

[excusetheblood]

I haven't given it a listen yet, but something about a band known for their dark, dreary imagery and genre fusing going in a straightforward retro prog direction and using such obnoxiously upbeat and cheesy artwork feels smugly disingenuous to me.

 

[Thralldom]

I don't like this band, but you shouldn't illegally download albums, especially when they aren't even out yet.

 

[The Butt]

I don't even like Opeth, but just out of spite I'm going to illegally download Heritage. Twice.

 

[JontRevolting]

I hated Akerfeldt from the moment I saw him,smarmy looking little cunt he is! One of those rare people that make my blood boil just by looking at him.I'd love to rip that faggot mowie clean off his face!! It's his fault Opeth suck.

 

[excusetheblood]

Nigga u just went full retard

 

[Thralldom]

His statement is actually true, even though it was poorly typed. He is responsible for their creative direction (or lack thereof) and most of the songwriting, so it is his fault that Opeth is such a terrible band.

 

[Stormwatch]

Christ. Akerfeldt is responsible for ALL their songwriting. Its a solo band, just like Annihilator or Death. But unlike Annihilator or Death, Opeth are fucking shite.