Has anyone else experienced this? When Deliverance first came out I basically rapidly came to the opinion that the first two tracks were standard (read: unremarkable) Opeth, then followed two interesting and well-developed softer tracks.....and then in my view, two attempts at expanding their sound that failed miserably.
WELL. Lemme tell yaZ, i'z iz going for a drug test tomorrow, and i've got to get up at 5.30 in the mornin' (it's 2.30 now) so that I can go to work with my parents and they can take me to the clinic in the afternoon. Now, I haven't had to get up so early in a couple months so naturally I just can't get to sleep......and fully conscious, in my dark room with the outside orange street lights casting a grand crisscrossed shadow visage of my window....well, blah, I decided to give Deliverance another chance....I've thought for a while that there was always something there I just wasn't fully giving credit to.
WOW! Wreath and Deliverance came across much as they did before, only more powerfully because I was giving them 100% of my attention. It was as these tracks were closing that I pondered and began to realise two things;
1 - I honestly believe that Deliverance has the most complex arrangements and the most material packed into the average song lengths since Morningrise, IF that. This impression only grew on me as I reconsidered the manic density of the closing two tracks....and saw them as deliberately chaotic rather than just haphazardly crammed.
2 - The clean vocals in Wreath and Deliverance are haunting. No, more than that, they're 'kin evil. As I thought this, I cast my mind over the artwork and the lyrics, and realised that this is possibly the darkest album Opeth have done. I would say this album has two main emotions; anger (an evil incarnation) and fear (loneliness especially). The opening two tracks seem to invite a seeping feeling of evil with those chilling clean passages.....the next two develop a more mature side of opeth (not that we haven't seen that before, but A Fair Judgement and For Absent Friends lean distinctly towards the style they would adopt on Damnation) and establish firmly a vague, melancholic mood. They're neither dark or triumphant...but somewhere inbetween. And then we're hit with Master's Apprentices; I used to think the opening was clumsy, and I still hold the view that it's not a GREAT opening, but it's heaviness is fitting in re-establishing a sense of strictness. (here, I considered the repressive moral elements of good and bad through the white/black artwork.....the theme made more significant by the loneliness in the artwork and the sense that there is some evil but unseen, strict, matriarchal prescence, such as a mean, passed-away grandmother. mikael's family loss at the time reinforce this idea) This formality established, Master's then enters what I would call a rising crescendo of spiritual enlightenment as the first clean vocals enter. the effects here seem to make them attempt to soar above the song itself. it then develops into a very frail clean passage that is constantly under threat by the severe barrage of the early song.....and hey and ho, the song crumbles into heaviness again as darkness is re-asserted. Then the final track. Before....I always hated this track. Think about it, it is SO untypical Opeth. It changes directions ALL the time, the riffs are unusually stilted and unmelodious, and the clean passages are structured with understated vocals and synths that are struggling to introduce a 'lightness' but end-up being downright 'kin creepy. This feeling can't be helped due to the precarious deconstruction of these last two tracks....and the utter chaos of By The Pain I See In Others, when considered in the context of the whole album, ceases in my eyes to be a messy and failed experiment but rather a calculated exploration of mood deconstruction. By the time it ends and the creepy sounds start coming-in.....I was truly 'kin amazed and actually pretty shaken......and that was really only a musical analysis. I wonder what else I could imagine if I studied the lyrics and their place. Oh well, that's for another time.
I came downstairs and I actually couldn't stop myself looking out of the windows into the dark, checking for outside interlopers before I turned a light on. My views on Deliverance have completely changed....before I barely gave it full attention and now it's all been revealed to me. has anyone else 'rediscovered' Deliverance after thinking it was pretty crap????
oh....and what does mikael say at the end of the disc??
WELL. Lemme tell yaZ, i'z iz going for a drug test tomorrow, and i've got to get up at 5.30 in the mornin' (it's 2.30 now) so that I can go to work with my parents and they can take me to the clinic in the afternoon. Now, I haven't had to get up so early in a couple months so naturally I just can't get to sleep......and fully conscious, in my dark room with the outside orange street lights casting a grand crisscrossed shadow visage of my window....well, blah, I decided to give Deliverance another chance....I've thought for a while that there was always something there I just wasn't fully giving credit to.
WOW! Wreath and Deliverance came across much as they did before, only more powerfully because I was giving them 100% of my attention. It was as these tracks were closing that I pondered and began to realise two things;
1 - I honestly believe that Deliverance has the most complex arrangements and the most material packed into the average song lengths since Morningrise, IF that. This impression only grew on me as I reconsidered the manic density of the closing two tracks....and saw them as deliberately chaotic rather than just haphazardly crammed.
2 - The clean vocals in Wreath and Deliverance are haunting. No, more than that, they're 'kin evil. As I thought this, I cast my mind over the artwork and the lyrics, and realised that this is possibly the darkest album Opeth have done. I would say this album has two main emotions; anger (an evil incarnation) and fear (loneliness especially). The opening two tracks seem to invite a seeping feeling of evil with those chilling clean passages.....the next two develop a more mature side of opeth (not that we haven't seen that before, but A Fair Judgement and For Absent Friends lean distinctly towards the style they would adopt on Damnation) and establish firmly a vague, melancholic mood. They're neither dark or triumphant...but somewhere inbetween. And then we're hit with Master's Apprentices; I used to think the opening was clumsy, and I still hold the view that it's not a GREAT opening, but it's heaviness is fitting in re-establishing a sense of strictness. (here, I considered the repressive moral elements of good and bad through the white/black artwork.....the theme made more significant by the loneliness in the artwork and the sense that there is some evil but unseen, strict, matriarchal prescence, such as a mean, passed-away grandmother. mikael's family loss at the time reinforce this idea) This formality established, Master's then enters what I would call a rising crescendo of spiritual enlightenment as the first clean vocals enter. the effects here seem to make them attempt to soar above the song itself. it then develops into a very frail clean passage that is constantly under threat by the severe barrage of the early song.....and hey and ho, the song crumbles into heaviness again as darkness is re-asserted. Then the final track. Before....I always hated this track. Think about it, it is SO untypical Opeth. It changes directions ALL the time, the riffs are unusually stilted and unmelodious, and the clean passages are structured with understated vocals and synths that are struggling to introduce a 'lightness' but end-up being downright 'kin creepy. This feeling can't be helped due to the precarious deconstruction of these last two tracks....and the utter chaos of By The Pain I See In Others, when considered in the context of the whole album, ceases in my eyes to be a messy and failed experiment but rather a calculated exploration of mood deconstruction. By the time it ends and the creepy sounds start coming-in.....I was truly 'kin amazed and actually pretty shaken......and that was really only a musical analysis. I wonder what else I could imagine if I studied the lyrics and their place. Oh well, that's for another time.
I came downstairs and I actually couldn't stop myself looking out of the windows into the dark, checking for outside interlopers before I turned a light on. My views on Deliverance have completely changed....before I barely gave it full attention and now it's all been revealed to me. has anyone else 'rediscovered' Deliverance after thinking it was pretty crap????
oh....and what does mikael say at the end of the disc??
