Opeth: Blackwater Park (2001)
20 years after its release, Opeth’s Blackwater Park has virtually “solidified” into a physical monument so imposing and invulnerable that today I have a hard time hearing it as anything but the culmination of all that came before, and the criterion for everything that followed in the band’s discography.
Which is another way of saying I’ve kind of played it to death … but, hey, only death is real!
All kidding aside, precious few bands manage to keep things fresh without radically altering their sound, but Opeth’s epic brand of progressive death metal was so unique to begin with, that it took them all five albums to perfect it on Blackwater Park.
And you have to give due credit to Porcupine Tree leader Steve Wilson, who, as producer, brought a perfectionist’s eye and a taskmaster’s exacting standards to help impose unprecedented order and fluidity to Opeth’s ten-minute creations or “movements,” as they liked to call them.
To the uninitiated, these no doubt seemed to start and finish in somewhat arbitrary fashion, liberally and violently dashing all kinds of softer musical tangents against the rocks of death metal fury, just as Åkerfeldt’s vocals flipped from bowel-churning grunts to crooning melodies, depending on each section’s mood and intensity.
But to those with prior exposure to Opeth’s work on Orchid (1995), Morningrise (‘96), My Arms, Your Hearse (‘98) and Still Life (1999), Blackwater Park felt like, not just a natural progression, but a de facto coming-of-age.
Here, state-of-the-art Opeth-ics like “The Leper Affinity,” “The Funeral Portrait” and title track made way for next-gen evolutions like “Bleak,” with its distinctive Arabian-flavored riff, the surprisingly accessible “The Drapery Falls,” and the shockingly gentle intro of “Dirge for November.”
With the benefit of hindsight, it’s obvious that the nearly universal hype and excitement surrounding Blackwater Park was entirely justified, not least because it catapulted the group right out of the extreme metal community and saw them embraced by music fans of all persuasions.
But, since harping on or arguing over any band’s best work is both a tedious and, frankly, futile subjective exercise, perhaps we should be thankful for LPs like this one, which can achieve a strong consensus, while also serving as a clear, neat demarcation line in said group’s career.
I’ll never enjoy Opeth’s recent, relatively straight progressive rock albums as much as I did their early-days metallic endeavors, with all of those startling and unpredictable dynamic contrasts; but I certainly don’t blame the band from exploring new sounds, rather than continually trying to top an insurmountable milestone like Blackwater Park.
More Opeth: Orchid, My Arms, Your Hearse, Still Life, “Still Day Beneath the Sun,” Ghost Reveries, Watershed, Pale Communion, Sorceress.
