Disco de Opeth: “Morningrise [Limited Edition]”

Much like my other Opeth reviews, I have to say that listening to an album of this caliber and then attempting to convey the feelings it arouses in the form of words is both foolish and futile. Nothing can prepare you for Opeth. Although the band has attracted its share of detractors now, I must say that any music listener with an open mind and long attention span should find hours of perplexing enjoyment here. Those who fail to understand, power to ya, but don't pollute this website with tasteless reviews on why you hate Opeth.

Morningrise is different from every other Opeth album. Each has its own appeal, something you look for as you're listening. With My Arms, Your Hearse it is the aggression and heavy riffs that I search for as I listen. With Still Life I listen for the enchanting vocal performance given by Mikael Akerfeldt. Blackwater Park has everything. Aggression, melody, awesome growling, awesome singing, beautiful acoustics, sweet riffs, and progressive song lengths. On here it is just the riffs. Oh, the riffs. And the twin guitar melodies. Amazing. The lyrics pale in comparison to future albums', although they are still good, and Akerfeldt has a different style of singing here. It's more of a black-metallish high shriek than the deep inhuman growl of late, and his clean vocal performance is less catchy and haunting. Therefore the guitar leads and segues into acoustic dreamland are what I look forward to when sitting back to this eclectic journey of a CD. The mood given by the amazing guitar lines on Morningrise make it my favorite, with Blackwater Park a close second.

Morningrise is also the least 'metal' of all their albums. When compared to MAYH or Deliverance, it is very soft. While those make Pantera and At the Gates sound light, Morningrise is like a heavy thrash album. The riffs do not reverberate in your skull like the opening to "Bleak," or "Godhead's Lament," or "When." They glide soothing over you, flowing in an ambient manner, rather than a percussive one. The song lengths are also unbelievable. There are five songs here, the average length 13 minutes or so, the longest being "Black Rose Immortal," at a Dream Theater-esque 20 minutes! An epic album in all proportions.

"Advent" kicks the album off with a short acoustic beginning and following with a 12-minute rollercoaster of double-bass drums and awesome riff after awesome riff, balanced with the needed, yet arbitrary acoustic interludes spicing up the mix. "The Night and the Silent Water" is a much more laid-back track, with less aggression, clocking at about 11 minutes. "Nectar" is another piledriver, this time with Medieval-sounding riffs similar to In Flames. "Black Rose Immortal" is the epic, which feels 8 minutes long at most. "To Bid You Farewell" is a largely jazzy-acoustic/clean vocals all through piece, with a bit of electric guitar finishing it off.

Opeth are beyond death metal. The incorporation of acoustic guitar is what makes them sound so classical. Many people compare bands like Suffocation or Emperor to the likes of Beethoven and Mozart. That's not accurate. Here's the real statement:

If Beethoven, Mozart, Grieg, and Mahler were transported to the present and were forced to form a rock band together, it would sound something like Opeth's Morningrise.

***This is a reissue, containing the bonus track "Eternal Soul Torture," a rough, poorly produced demo that was later cut up and used for the other songs. It sort of throws off the album's mood, but whatever.

The Amazon.com samples do not do this band any justice(espesially when you only hear 30 seconds on 10min. songs). Opeth must be one of the most musically talented bands on the planet. Their music is on so many levels it's impossible to categorize. And hearing the Death Metal parts of their music on these 30 second samples is only the begining and there is so much more to these songs. It is like hearing poetry when you listen to them. AMAZING! MUST BUY! Try Albums like Orcid, Morningrise, My Arms, Your Hearst. Try These before buying the newer albums.

Humans are naturally drawn to beauty in its myriad forms. A woman, a wild animal, a great metal album - each is beautiful in its own way, ceaselessly entreating us to appreciate it. Yet curiously not everyone heeds beauty's call. Some are unmoved by the sight of a comely woman, others slay animals for sport, and then there are those who repudiate metal. "It's just noise" is a common complaint by many of the uninformed. Others look down their noses and spit, "It's only pathetic losers who listen to metal!"

Pity the Discouraged Ones, for it is they who ignore the beauty before them. If only they would open their minds and ears to the wonders that metal provides the adventurous spirit, a sumptuous buffet of ideas and emotions awaits them.

Amongst the cornucopia that is my metal collection sits an object of such beauty, no words I write can do it justice. And yet, I feel I must persevere with this review if only so that a few of the uninitiated may join the fold of brothers and sisters united in their ardor for metal. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like you to make the acquaintance of Morningrise, the most beautiful death metal album ever created.

Morningrise is the captivating creation of Opeth, arguably Sweden's most accomplished metal band. There are only a handful of geniuses in the rock music scene today, and Opeth guitarist/vocalist Michael Akerfeldt is most assuredly one of them. Morningrise is simply stunning and, unlike with most death metal albums, its power and grace become apparent as early as the first listen.

If you're like me, you remember a time when we naively thought Entombed's Clandestine and At the Gates' Slaughter of the Soul would never be topped. But then along came Morningrise which bludgeoned those death metal classics effortlessly. Like most Opeth albums, Morningrise is oddly soothing despite its stylistic fluctuations. Akerfeldt alternates between guttural and clean vocals with such subtlety that at times you don't even notice the transition.

The first track, "Advent", sets the standard so high, it is nothing short of miraculous that Opeth are able to match it again four times over by the end of the album. Throughout the album, the listener's senses are repeatedly aroused by moments of feral aggression only to be becalmed by passages of blissful tranquility. The effect is to leave the listener a bit dazed the way one feels upon emerging from a theater after viewing a particularly moving film. Yet Morningrise is somehow even more spectacular than a powerful film in that it invites the listener to conjure up his or her own images while experiencing it. I will not even attempt to waste empty words on the merits of individual songs when to truly appreciate them, it is the music, not my prose, that you must experience. Uplifting and life-affirming, Morningrise is an album to be cherished.

While "Morningrise' is not near as well produced as the later albums would be, this is far more genuine. Their sound has changed so much since the days of 'Orchid' and 'Morningrise' that I can say, without a doubt, Opeth will never reach as high as they did here.

Later albums such as 'Blackwater Park' and 'Ghost Reveries' would lean more to the progressive side of metal (which is perfectly fine), but their earlier albums had a much more primal feel to them. The guitar lines were more prominent (and absolutely jaw-dropping) over-shadowing the bass and drums just enough to avoid sounding muddy.

Vocals are quite different then on the later albums, too. The growl isn't as deep and sounds almost Black Metalesque in comparison...a good kind of Black Metalesque. The thing with 'Morningrise' is that the whole is far greater then the sum of it's parts, and the picture on the front very astutely matches the over-arching tone of the album. Very fine artwork indeed.

For some seriously awesome riffs be sure to check out the opening theme riff to 'Night and the Silent Water' and really anything from the mid-section of 'Black Rose Immortal'.

Visceral, technical, and enduring...this one is a keeper. One of metal's all-time best.

Truth be told, I'm one of the newer Opeth fans out there. In fact, I had never even heard of the band until a few months ago, where I saw the band name, amongst a few others lumped in the "similar artists" section for In Flames. However, it wasn't really until I began to notice the heaps of praise placed upon this band by Amazon peers that I decided to give Opeth a try. I began by downloading a couple of mp3s to get a gist of their sound, and though I fond it undeniably unique, in all honesty, I wasn't that immediately impressed. Where was the musical genius, (which it had so often been referred to as) I was expecting to hear? Thus, a bit disappointed, I cast Opeth aside for a bit.

Fast forward about a month or so later, where I find myself bored in a record shop, with nothing really catching my eye, until I happen upon a copy of... tada! Morningrise. I was feeling a bit adventurous that day, and, with nothing really else jumping out at me, I decided to give Opeth my infrequent second chance. I locked my room, made sure there were no immediate distractions, and once again entered the world of Opeth.

Two and something hours, two full run-throughs of the album, and one deep breath of satisfaction later, I hit the stop button on my stereo a full-fledged Opeth fan, the depth and beauty of the music fully reaching me at last. If there's one thing that's disappointing about this band, it's how many people in the world will never get to hear them and see for themselves just how brilliant these guys are.

If you ask most Opeth fans what the band sounds like, most will have a bit of difficulty answering that question, simply because they cover such a broad spectrum of different musical styles it's impossible to peg them as simply metal. There's so much going on in their music that really classifying them as anything but Opeth really seems inappropriate. Be that as it may, I'll try and give it a shot... They have the brutal intensity of metal, for sure, but then on any given moment, they might replace their screeching guitars and groling vocals with a delicate and ambient acoustic melody, with soulful clean singing. At first listen, the music may seem convoluted and directionless, but you soon realize that these changes are most definitely appropriate, echoing the different emotions of the heart and soul, from light to dark, and anger to sadness. This becomes even more apparent once you read the beautiful lyrics.

One of the biggest problems I have with... well... almost ANY song over the 10 minute mark is that most must rely on long, drawn out musical interludes either containing a redundant riff/melody, a promising riff which eventually wears out its welcome, or an entire portion (usually somewhere in the middle) where the song essentially stops, save for a few guitar notes and a lackluster beat. Considering that EVERY song on this album tops that mark, you would think you're in for one boring cd, but no! that is not the case here. Opeth have apparently mastered the art of writing a lengthy song, without making the songs their songs long for seemingly no purpose other than... well, being long. This is most especially true on their 20 minute mega-epic, Black Rose Immortal, the most well-done epic since A Change of Seasons.

Although Black Rose Immortal is certainly one of the album's highlights, every song here is relevant and gives no hint of filler material. My personal pick of the album is the emotional closer, To Bid You Farewell, a perfect example of Opeth's acoustic brilliance, and Mikael Akerfeldt's moving lyrics. Credit also needs to be given to the band's gifted (though now replaced) bass player, who, unlike many other bass players, isn't afraid to allow his instrument to stand out and accentuate the song.

If I can clearly convey any message in this review, I hope it's that you give this band a shot, and keep an open mind and let the music really reach you. These guys are truly gifted, not just in their instrumental skill, but in their ability to echo the rawest and purest of human emotions in their music: sadness, betrayal, anger, and love. You don't just listen to their music, you FEEL their music. Go and experience it now.