Opeth - Watershed Review
by Mark Hensch
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Hearing this album is like taking a melancholy walk through a vast, decrepit mansion from the days of youth. Each room offers up its own unique brand of reflections and memories, jolting one deeper into personal reminiscence. Through it all, there is a nagging sense of the familiar against the creeping fear of the unknown.
The mansion in question is Watershed, the ninth studio album from gloomy Swedish progressives Opeth. Its foundations lie atop 2005's Ghost Reveries, an album which combined all of Opeth's traditionally disparate elements into something more fierce and cohesive. Rooms led towards well-trod yet forgotten paths of doom, death metal, gothic, and psychedelia. Through it all, a hint of both majesty and sadness falls, a dark pall over every step of the way. Watershed, in case it is not by now apparent, is one powerful album.
"Coil," for example, smoothly unravels like unspooled silk. Gloriously lush acoustic flourishes run hand-in-hand with frontman Mikael Εkerfeldt's inviting but commanding vocals. As if this delicateness is not surprise enough, cue the appearance of lovely Swedish songbird Marie Fredriksson. Fredriksson possesses beautifully painful wails, the likes of which create both a duet with Akerfeldt and a dainty, memorable start to the album as a whole.
The first outright metal song, "Heir Apparent," is amongst the best heavy music Opeth has ever penned. Bleak doom chords slowly drift upwards, gloriously burning in a piano interlude as stunning as it is sinister. When the real riffs---devastating death metal numbers those---kick in, it feels like an instant chest cave. Topped by furiously roaring vocals and jamming flare ups of 1970s prog rock, this one has it all.
"The Lotus Eater" is not much different, its hazy introduction soon lost in a storm of blastbeats, hypnotic wails, and monstrous death metal bellows. "Lotus" soon expands beyond even mere brutality, floating away into frightening psychic realms that are truly out there and back again with startling simplicity.
"Burden," meanwhile, starts as a simple piano ballad but soon grows into something so much more. As it reveals itself, "Burden" becomes a stylish lament wallowing in fuzzy keyboards and lush guitars.
Lead single "Porcelain Heart" is next, billowing like a cloud of mesmerizing fog. As its quirky time signatures and psychedelic effects fight with classic gothic atmospherics, "Porcelain" evolves into a poignant and crushing number one must hear to believe.
After this, "Hessian Peel" hovers between the spooky despair of My Dying Bride and the hallucinogenic soul-searching of Pink Floyd. A desperate guitar pattern flees through barren expanses of cinematic sound, giving the tune a notion of both grandeur and defeat.
Closing cut "Hex Omega" begins with slamming theatrics only to fall back into ethereal menace. Shredding guitar solos often fade into lonely mellotrons, while ponderous riffs trades places with trippy acoustic guitars. All-in-all, this is one last magic spell on an album packed with them.
Watershed as an album sees Opeth add yet another elegant gem to the crown only they wear. Though some may complain Opeth have rarely deviated from their own formula in years past, this record sees the band taking their own trademarks further down into weird horror and nihilistic sadness. Majestic, lonely, grandiose, and stupendous all at once, Watershed offers something for every kind of music fan. Get this now.
Opeth's Watershed
1. Coil
2. Heir Apparent
3. The Lotus Eater
4. Burden
5. Porcelain Heart
6. Hessian Peel
7. Hex Omega
Special Edition Only
8. Derelict Herds
9. Bridge of Sighs (Robin Trower cover)
10. Den Standinga Resan (Marie Fredriksson cover)
CD Info and Links
Opeth - Watershed Rating:10.00
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