OPETH - In Live Concert At The Royal Albert Hall
November 4, 2010, 14 years ago
(Roadrunner)
Is there a better “name check” these days than Opeth? Mikael Åkerfeldt (frontman) offers a career retrospective, kicking off with the entire Blackwater Park album, chronologically, almost a decade after the fact. These 16 songs, two CDs (and a live DVD) worth of the Swede’s depressive service, includes a pair off the Orchid debut (yes!), and 'Advent' off the Morningrise follow-up. Nice to see one track from Still Life (my personal fave): ‘The Moor’, yet almost everything else is lifted from releases prior to the dawn of this decade. In fact, other than ‘The Watershed’, there’s just one track each from the discs backtracking to ’01. That said, clean voiced, or gruff intonation, guitar playing frontman Michael “I’m Not Worthy” Åkerfeldt is the least “rock star” individual you’re ever likely to meet and as such, everyone should be impelled to buy (some of) his (musical) output. Would have liked to see more old school material, but given where they are these days, I”ll take that up with Mr. Akerfeldt the next time I see/talk to him. “We figured we would celebrate our 20th anniversary in a pub.” Metal people are so ugly! Blast beats, death metal vocals, we are actually bringing death metal into the hall of fine culture! Can’t say anything else. Opeth is godly!
