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Opeth with Tapping the Vein and Paradise Lost at The Fox Theater in Boulder, CO 1/29/03
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Opeth, they are the premier progressive death metal band hailing from Sweden. Opeths music is a dark and lugubrious yet a highly melodic brew of death metal, complete with cookie monster vocals. But make no mistake Opeth is not just another silly and deranged death metal band. Opeths lyrical content is rich and interesting, totally devoid of the typical death metal clichs of Satan, mutilated corpses, and the like. True, Opeths music is heavy enough to kill a small dog. But thats only part of the point. What really sets them apart from the pack is their use of lush acoustic interludes that complement the heaviness, along with their uber-melodic guitar riffs. Typical Opeth compositions are ten or twelve minutes long each. Throughout the songs, they stop on a dime, changing from crushing metallic riffs to moody acoustic passages and clean vocals. Even some of my friends who are not into extreme metal have commented that Opeth songs are strikingly melodic and gorgeous. Now, onto the concert: My roommate and I showed up at The Fox Theater about an hour early. We were greeted by a healthy line of eager looking Opeth fans. The crowd was a mix of raucous looking metal-heads, decked out in quasi-goth attire and pick-your-favorite extreme-metal-band t-shirts, and well-dressed 30-somethings, who just as easily could have been standing in line for an Enya concert. There is something to be said for a band whose shows have well-kempt couples standing next to dudes sporting Cannibal Corpse t-shirts. The openers were two bands that I had never heard: Tapping the Vein and Paradise Lost. Tapping the Vein, a quartet from Philadelphia, walked onstage to deliver a short and concise set of not-too-heavy-metal. I felt especially compelled to like TTV, as they had a female lead vocalist, and female musicians are an all-too-rare occurrence in metal today. Maybe it was because of the short set, but their music struck me as somewhat bland and unremarkable. On the bright side, they were earnest enough to make me not want to throw projectiles at them, not that I have a habit of doing that kind of thing. Paradise Lost came on to a warmer welcome about 30 minutes after TTV wrapped up. As I said, I had never heard these British blokes before, but they pumped out a solid set of aggressive material. Their songs had an electronic vibe which I thought worked well for them. They played for what seemed to be about 45-60 minutes and made their exit. After a wait that was just shy of an eternity, the lights went out and an eerie intro tape came on. Then, four long haired Swedes walked on stage to colossal cheering. They immediately unleashed their opener, The Leper Affinity. Though Opeths studio recordings are heavy as hell, the bands concert sound was immense and crushing enough to fell an elephant. Not only that, the sound was articulate! My biggest fear about the concert was that the beautiful guitar melodies would be lost in a wall of distortion. Not so, thank you very much to the sound crew.
Admittedly some songs came off better than others. People have often commented that Opeths music loses some of its eloquence in the live setting due to the lack of acoustic guitars. Well, this is really only a half-truth. The clean electric parts sound fantastic. But, yes, the lack of acoustic guitars does hurt. I mourned the loss of the acoustic guitars most on Godheads Lament, one of my favorite Opeth songs. On the album version, the middle section of the song is accentuated by double acoustic guitars furiously strummed to create an amazing folk-like quality that, in its contrast to the rest of the song, is hypnotic and moving. On the live version, alas, I had to settle for a powerful song robbed of its color. Despite these occasional and brief disappointments, live Opeth turned out to be unbelievably good, even better than studio Opeth. Advent, the first song from the album Morningrise, usually strikes me as a relatively laid back song. Heavy, yes, but Morningrise is about mood and melody above all. The live rendition of Advent was an order of magnitude more powerful. The mood and the melody were there, but they were amplified twenty or thirty times. Both of the tracks they played from Deliverance (the title track and A Fair Judgment) were excellent. A Fair Judgment was haunting, and the guitar solo was the zenith of expressive guitar playing. Deliverance pummeled the audience with its alternating galloping rhythms and syncopated riffing. Regarding technical aspects of the performance, Opeth was tight and together. I was amazed at how multi-faceted a musician Mikael Akerfeldt is. Not only is he capable of playing difficult guitar riffs while roaring out death growls fearsome enough to scare big Nordic guys, but the man can solo! He actually took over most of the Opeth guitar solos, and he played them with palpable conviction and seeming ease. What's more, his vocal performance was spot on. I was amazed at Akerfeldts ability to instantly change from the harsh death growl to his harmonious clean vocals, without faltering or falling off key. Opeths rhythm section, composed of drummer Martin Lopez and bassist Martin Mendez (collectively known as The Martins) is wholly underrated. Whereas Mikael Akerfeldt and Peter Lindgren are the meat of Opeth, the Martins are the spice. Martin Lopez is a man capable of first-rate drummingnot just mindless pounding of the double bass, but percussion sections that are jazzy and nuanced. And admittedly, I dont pay a whole lot of attention to bass players in general, but judging by the way Martin Mendezs fingers flew across the fretboard in a frenzied but precise attack, I would say he is a master of his instrument. All told, not only did Opeth deliver a superb performance, but they seemed to enjoy themselves greatly onstage. Despite their dark lyrical content, Opeth come across as pretty happy guys. Based on their energetic headbanging and the fact that Mikael Akerfeldt liked to repeatedly ask the audience about which Opeth albums could be found in local record stores, I got the impression that they are their own biggest fans (and hence have a great time at their own concerts). This is more than okay by me, as I love to see such an obviously talented and passionate band achieve success. The show that I attended was part of Opeths first ever headlining tour of the U.S. Considering that they played to a packed audience of about 700 people, it seems that at least a small amount of recognition is starting to find this unique band.
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