Porcelain Heart

[The Leper]

why does everyone bash Harlequin Forest and By the Pain I See In Others... In my eyes, those are excellent songs. Especially HF, that song is beautiful and i think represents Opeth in some of its best moments, the end of the song and the twelve string part... HF Was my favorite song off of GR.

Two songs are absolutely brilliant. What some of you are failing to realize is that:
A. This new CD is going to be revolutionary... more so than the past.
B. This CD will set a standard that will make every other band pale in comparison.
C. How will anyone on the planet ever be able to write better stuff than this... honestly? Mike is writing all the good parts. haha.

To Mike:
You are a beautiful man. It's a pleasure to be on your balls. I have no problem with that.


EDIT:
To Axe:
I honestly thought Opeth would be changed forever without lopez. You have filled his shoes and far beyond, people are not giving you enough credit. But you are one of the best drummers i've ever heard in my life. You've got the "pocket".

 

[Westvleteren]

harlequin forest has a good beginning, a good ending, and a fucking awful middle, the suckitude of which is highlighted most clearly by akerfeldt's christina aguilera vocal masturbation in the 'it's all false pretension' part

 

[DirTh]

harlequin forest has a good beginning, a good ending, and a fucking awful middle, the suckitude of which is highlighted most clearly by akerfeldt's christina aguilera vocal masturbation in the 'it's all false pretension' part

HF has an awesome beginning, not so sure on the end but true the middle is a big let down.

 

[The Don]

Man it's kind of disgusting how much ball-sucking is going on over these two songs. Porcelain Heart is shit. It's 8 minutes long and has 4 parts to it. 4 drawn out, slow, boring parts. Riffs are uninteresting, structure is forced, and the transition into the last chorus is laughable. The Lotus Eater is pretty good, but that part at 5:50 just makes me chuckle at how gay it is. I hope Watershed has some heavy moments because I would hate to see Opeth get lost in this "less is more" pattern. On that note, I'll leave before the fannies make a page or two about how dumb I am.

 

[HoursOfDebt]

wow you are sooo cool. bye!

 

[all_sins_undone]

not everyone has to like everything, some fools need to grasp that ideology

 

[HoursOfDebt]

i understand that. but to call eveyones praise "ball-sucking" is crossing that line also.

 

[all_sins_undone]

well, when ones bias for a group such as opeth becomes so large that they actually take personal offense to another person with an opposing opinion... maybe "ball-sucking" is an apt term to use

 

[HoursOfDebt]

well, when ones bias for a group such as opeth becomes so large that they actually take personal offense to another person with an opposing opinion... maybe "ball-sucking" is an apt term to use

i was not taking it personal. i just found the criticism lame do to the fact that he would call anybody saying anything good about the song "ball sucking".

(pretty much the same point you were bringing up in your first response to my post :Smug

you said good things about the songs iirc, and some bad, but you were not cutting down others who said positive things.

 

[SasukeFutant]

harlequin forest has a good beginning, a good ending, and a fucking awful middle, the suckitude of which is highlighted most clearly by akerfeldt's christina aguilera vocal masturbation in the 'it's all false pretension' part

The acoustic part into the gregorian chant part might be my absolute favorite opeth moment. So damn good. Though I love and support anything opeth does, I do wish sometimes that they'd use gregorian chant parts like that more. I hope Mikael eventually writes a true black metal album(whether it's with opeth or not doesn't matter) with folky interludes(like the oboe section in Porcelain Heart)and Gregorian chants. After hearing that BRUTAL end section of The Lotus Eater(prior to the strange outro), I'm convinced that he could write the best/most evil sounding black metal album of all time. Like Bergtatt, but way better.

How about Ihsahn and Mikael team up again with the sole intent of writing the best, most epic black metal album of all time? I'm dreaming, I know. But, Jesus, every metal band with screams/growls should just recruit Mikael to perform their studio vocals because there isn't a single growler/screamer that comes close to competing with him. Well, maybe Devin Townsend.

Both new songs rule, I love the fill, and I'm stoked to hear the rest.

 

[IntoPhagist]

People hate Harlequin Forrest? You mean the best song on GR?

 

[hibernal_dream]

I've only listened to Harlequin Forest about 5 times. Half of them ended about 3 minutes into the song

 

[Andrew Park]

^ must be partially deaf.

 

[i aint play this]

Man it's kind of disgusting how much ball-sucking is going on over these two songs. Porcelain Heart is shit. It's 8 minutes long and has 4 parts to it. 4 drawn out, slow, boring parts. Riffs are uninteresting, structure is forced, and the transition into the last chorus is laughable. The Lotus Eater is pretty good, but that part at 5:50 just makes me chuckle at how gay it is. I hope Watershed has some heavy moments because I would hate to see Opeth get lost in this "less is more" pattern. On that note, I'll leave before the fannies make a page or two about how dumb I am.

Dunno about the ball-sucking but i have to agree with you 200% here. I liked it at first but now i think It's a very shitty song.
I was quite impressed to see so many posters dissing the drum fill because it looked like they never heard a drummer add something non linear in a small part of a song in their whole lives. I wasn't defending the song, even if some dickface (Ometh) mistook me for a fanboy.
The fucking TGC melody revival is the worst step that Mike could take with his songwriting, and there is not a single interesting hook or dynamic riff in the entire thing. It's a trainwreck of a song, the vocals starting at 5:00 sound too sweety sweety, like Tori Akerfeldt or something, people love that part and i don't know why.

The Lotus Eaters and Heir Apparent are 10/10 awesome songs, but Porcelain Heart is a pretty lame one (take no offence Mike).

 

[The Poona of Peshwa]

^ I agree, that last transition is painful. Maybe it's done that way so it's easier to chop up into a digestible 4 minute piece for a music video. Or maybe Opeth's giving a nod to Judas Priest by releasing cheesy non-representative songs as singles. Breaking the law!

 

[Aecliptica]

so good

 

[Kirkfjell]

I agree. The Lotus Eater is bloody fantastic. And I love the part 5 minutes into the song. Porcelain Heart however doesn't do it for me ... It's an ok song I guess, but nowhere near the quality I've come to expect from Opeth. I was trying to compare it to another song of theirs, and the closest I got was Dirge for November, as it is also very repetitive. Thing is though, that the parts that make up Dirge are fucking ace, and sadly those of Porcelain Heart are not ... Just my opinion ...

 

[all_sins_undone]

well maybe it's because porcelain heart is the album's single :shrug:

from what i've heard of heir apparent and the lotus eater, they're much better than porcelain heart and most of ghost reveries, i'm not doubting that this album will be an owner

 

[Baza]

The amount of screeches at the acoustic guitar parts has really passed the limits - I don't know why Mike plays the guitar like that - is that so hard not to make these screeches? Do they think that it adds something to the music, a more "real" feel or something? Is it impossible to rid of it when editing the sound at the studio? A lot of Opeth' music has these screeches at the acoustic parts, I absolutely hate them, it's such an unpleasant sound! And in "Porcelain Heart" the amount and volume of it totally ruin the song, instead of enjoying the acoustic parts, I get really annoyed, it's like waiting for the inevitable punches in the face, which keep on coming. Listening to it with headphones is the worst. Other bands have the screeches too, but no so many and not that loud in order to ruin the song.

Except that, there are some good parts and some not so good parts in the songs IMO, I'll just have to wait for the whole album release to form an opinion.

 

[bahadur]

Well I have heard the songs once and I can say that they correspond to Opeth qualities of songwriting and performing. It is still classy and I still believe that Opeth has no shitty songs. Some songs are just good, others are masterpieces.