 Opeth | NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - When you look at it on paper, it is bizarre that Swedish band Opeth is becoming as popular as it is in the United States. The group has been together for 15 years, and it has taken nearly that long for it to crack mainstream North America. Its progressive style makes it the Pink Floyd of death metal, and Opeth defies the genre's template by alternating between aggressive passages and soothing interludes in its music. And those compositions are so long that the two-hour concert the quintet played Thursday at New York's Webster Hall featured only nine songs -- including the encore. |
But Opeth's powerful songwriting is one reason why the group is winning more fans. The other is its great concerts. As this night showed, bassist Martin Mendez, guitarist Peter Lindgren, keyboardist Per Wiberg, singer-guitarist Mikael Akerfeldt and drummer Martin Axenrot (temporarily filling in for an ailing Martin Lopez) are as proficient in performance as they are in crafting dark, brooding power jams.
The animated players -- Wiberg was close to slamming his head into his keys several times -- concentrate on nailing the frequent time changes and cues, as Lindren's face showed during the riveting "Bleak," a punchy, nine-minute-plus epic that set the first mosh pits boiling. No matter how furiously Wiberg or Mendez thrashed their noggins, the band is a patient, meticulous unit that handles the ever-changing tempos with care.
One minute, Opeth's ear-splitting riffs would incite frenzied headbanging, and the next, fans would be swaying to gentle melodies, as was the scene during "Face of Melinda" and "The Baying of the Hounds." The band played up the contrasting reactions by following tranquil gothic piece "In My Time of Need" -- which drifted by like a soft dream -- with a thundering rendition of the frenetic "The Grand Conjuration." In some settings, the extreme mood swings would be too schizophrenic to be entertaining, so it's a testament to Opeth's skill that fans are just as enthralled with its quieter sound as they are with the band's metal roar.
The mild-mannered Akerfeldt is a gentleman frontman whose deep voice, elegant accent and droll humor made for comical patter. The funnier bits are too adult for print. But also amusing was his leading the room in "a lesson in death metal vocals" by emitting a deep grunt for the crowd to imitate and then chastising his pupils with, "Not tight enough."
After Akerfeldt joked that a dream about Burt Reynolds inspired the next tune, Opeth fired off its beloved masterpiece "Deliverance." The track was an explosive roller coaster that turned the 1,000-strong crowd rabid. The syncopated grooves of its extended outro were like marching orders for mayhem that the Swedes didn't repeal until finishing "Black Water Park" and encore "Demon of the Fall." Anybody who was a casual fan at the start of the show had to have fallen under Opeth's command by the time it finished.
source: Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
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