^are you going to actually refute any of the points i made, or is this the typical "durrrr opeth rules" response that i expected
I don't post here often, but this caught my attention, so I'll bite.
I attend a lot of concerts, in different cities, since I travel a lot. These concerts run the gamut from Metal to Jazz, Blues to Electronica. I will not claim that Opeth is among the world's greatest stage performers. What one looks for in a concert really varies, but generally I'd say you want to be blown away by a *performance*, something that messes with your emotions on multiple levels, between sound, excitement, visuals,
musicianship, and the quality of the music itself.
For example, on a balance of these factors I'd cite greats like B.B King in blues, Underworld in electronic / dance music, Pink Floyd in Prog Rock, Napalm Death or Dillinger Escape Plan in grindcore, and probably Iron Maiden in Metal as having the largest impact on me at a performance level.
On the other hand, I've watched Opeth grow as performers since 2002, and it's fucking unbelievable how far this band has come, and how much they dominate the stage lately. In early 2003, on the Deliverance tour, Mikael was quite shy, though still charming - they "replicated" their songs live competently (though not polished) as you might say.
And then, one of the greatest Metal shows I have ever experienced was Opeth in 2003 in Buffalo - in just 5+ months the band had an order of magnitude more confidence and polish to their sound - in terms of rising above past experience & set expectations. The energy level was still "laid back", I'd say, given how intense the music can get.
Later that Summer, on the first night of the joint Porcupine Tree / Opeth Damnation tour in Toronto, it was clear Mike was ridiculously nervous playing some of those songs live for the first time. For instance, when he played Benighted off of Still Life, it was basically him on a stool with an acoustic guitar, admitting he was freaked out because it was a hard song to play. You should have seen his shit eating grin afterwards when he pulled it off. The whole night was fantastic - again, not the greatest performance in the world, but still marked improvement from the last time I saw them. I got lucky enough to set next to Mike during the Porcupine Tree set, and congratulated him on a great set, he seemed like a load was taken off his shoulders now that the first evening was in the can.
I can go on and on, how I've watched them improve during the Lamentations tour or the Ghost Reveries tour in Toronto, or in New York City for the "Chronology MCMXCIV" concert, or for Gigantour a few years back, or most recently, in San Francisco for the "Watershed" tour.
In 2008, the whole band *sounds* better than ever, and seem to be enjoying themselves more with the new tracks. They now bring one of the most polished live performances around, given the intricacy of the music, and have an assured , but laid back, stage presence that manages to pull off a feeling of wonder in the audience, even while not really coming across as "rock stars".
I just came back from Metallica at the Oracle Arena in Oakland - my last two concerts here were Opeth in October and NIN back in September. And while NIN and Metallica are some of the best showmen ever, and I must say that Trent's visual creativity is mind-blowing, the concert that brought the emotion out, for me anyway, was Opeth.
