Anathema & Opeth @ Leeds Met SU

As if Eluveitie, Sabaton and Nightwish weren't enough for one month, November also saw Anathema and Opeth on tour in the UK. We bought tickets for this gig before we even knew Sabaton were touring, so the wait has been long and filled with anticipation. The gig was to be held in the Leeds Met student union bar, a venue that none of our little party had been to before, and a stone's throw from where I work. It turned out to be very disorganised, with queues being moved, staff not knowing things like how to get to toilet, toilets being blocked by security ... not a great start.

Anathema were up first. One or two technical difficulties were present and, to be honest, the sound quality wasn't great. But this is Anathema, and even a sub-par Anathema gig is amazing. It's a shame the computer was out of tune for Closer, but everything else was spot on.

Between sets everything was looking good. The complete disorganisation of the queue and toilets was all but forgotten. Time for a drink! I went to the bar.

Oh deary me. Only half the bar was open. 4 people serving a crowd of hundreds, the bar queue was 50 yards wide and 6 people deep. They were only about half done when the interval was over. I waited around for a bit and finally got a drink, only to discover the next disappointment.

I couldn't get into the room to see Opeth. The Leeds Met SU reckon they have an 1100 capacity room. Nonsense. Absolute nonsense. The crowd was pushed back and out of the room, so the pictures I'm putting up here were taken by holding my camera up over the crowd outside the venue, zoomed in as far as possible. I never did get in, although it turns out that wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

You see, they also turned off the A/C and had absolutely no ventilation. The room was a sauna. People were staggering out, faint and sweating, and many left or spent the gig sat in the foyer. I joined them, in the end. The bar staff were lining up cups of water on the bar for customers who just couldn't stand it any more. It was a mess. And a massive shame, because it sounded (muffled through doors and hazy air) that it was a good set and that Mikael had finally stopped being ridiculous and started singing the songs properly again. Growls and all.

And to top it all off, I lost the parking token and had to pay a tenner to get the car out of the car park. Still, Anathema were good, it was nice to spend time with friends. And I learned a valuable lesson; 2.5 pints of Monster in one day is bad for you. Oh, and Leeds Met SU is a terrible venue for well known bands.

My Top 10 Essential Metal Albums

While watching Gojira at the Corporation in Sheffield the other day, I was challenged to produce my Top 10 Essential Metal Albums. The albums that I keep going back to, or have some special meaning to me. It's obviously a very personal list and I can guarantee that just about everybody in the world will find fault with it, but that's the point of these things, isn't it?

Dark Tranquillity - We Are The Void Dark Tranquillity's latest album (although it is now five years old), and the one I have played most by a very large margin. I have even played it twice as much as Projector, my previous favourite. Featuring some shudderingly creepy melodeath riffs and covering all the classic Gothenburg bases, you can't go far wrong with this one. It's hard to choose a favourite track of this album, but I guess Shadow In Our Blood or Iridium would take it. Or Her Silent Language, or The Grandest Accusation. One of those, anyway.

Opeth - Ghost Reveries There will always be controversy over choosing a favourite Opeth album, but this is mine, narrowly beating Blackwater Park to the top spot (thanks to my decision to only have one album by any given band in the list). Of all the Opeth albums I have on my iPod (most of them) it's the one I return to time and again for my fix of proggy deathy growliness. The Grand Conjuration is probably the best track, but like We Are The Void there are too many good ones. The cover of Soldier of Fortune is bloody good, too.

Lacuna Coil - Comalies From way back in the days when I was finding my metal feet, as it were, Comalies contains just enough heavy, just enough catchy to get me hooked. This was my gateway drug to a love affair with melodic death metal, of all things. Top track would be Tight Rope, which gives me a little nerdgasm for recognising the game the voiceover samples are taken from.

Agalloch - Marrow Of The Spirit I heard about Agalloch long before I heard Agalloch, and when I finally did hear them, I wondered why I hadn't looked them up before. Dark and disquieting and epic in equal measure. Favourite track would have to be, um, all the tracks. Seriously, I can't choose between them.

Judas Priest - Painkiller The one and only venture into NWOBHM on this list. As must as Iron Maiden is seen as the pinnacle of British heavy metal, you just can't beat Painkiller for volume or tempo. I did air guitar to the title track a couple of months ago and my left shoulder still hasn't forgiven me. My favourite tracks are Painkiller, obviously, and Night Crawler.

Insomnium - Above The Weeping World Although in recent months it has been pushed aside in favour of One For Sorrow, Above The Weeping World is still Insomnium's magnum opus, and proof that they are still one of the finest melodic death bands in the business. I'm starting to think I shouldn't have tried to include a favourite track. On this one The Gale, Mortal Share, The Killjoy and Devoid of Caring are my choices.

Wolverine - Still One of my favourite albums ever. I first heard Sleepy Town on a friend's shuffle, and wanted to know what the rest sounded like. I was amazed, and have been a fan of the band ever since. Sleepy Town itself is high on the list of favourite songs ever, too.

Sylosis - Edge Of The Earth As grandiose and epic as it is proggy as it is ear pummeling. I originally dismissed Sylosis as being too -core for my tastes based on looks alone. Big. Mistake. This album was one of the surprises of 2011 and still gets regular rotation on my commute. It's hard to pick favourite tracks because the whole album flows so well together, although Empyreal (both parts) deserve special mention.

Eluveitie - Slania Is it folk metal, or is it Gothenburg melodic death with a hurdy gurdy? I don't really know, but it's bloody good. I first heard of (and, indeed, heard) Eluveitie at Bloodstock '08. I rushed to the CD sales tent, only to discover that I had missed the rush and every copy of Slania had been sold in 30 minutes. Inis Mona is the definite highlight of this folk juggernaut.

Ghost Brigade - Isolation Songs I originally found out about Ghost Brigade from Last.fm, recommended due to my constant playing of Dark Tranquillity and Insomnium. I'm glad the recommendation engine worked this time! Possibly the most depressing death metal band I've ever heard. Highlights include Into The Black Light and Lost In A Loop.


I was also graciously allowed 5 "honourable mentions" for those albums that I love, but didn't make the top 10. To be honest this was harder to come up with than the first 10. There are so many albums I love  that narrowing it down proved difficult.

One in particular that gets regular plays is Skyforger by Amorphis. A random purchase at HMV led me to discover Amorphis, a sort of hybrid of melodic death and folk that's both heavy as a heavy thing and melodic as an, um, melodic ... thing. Aerolithe by Fall Of The Leafe (which led to the coining of the term "fotling", meaning "listening to Fall Of The Leafe") is another that I throw on a lot when I fancy something a bit more utterly nonsensical.

Perhaps a controversial choice because it is the least metal of anything I've put so far, but How To Measure A Planet by The Gathering is a long standing repeat listen. A fine work among a body of fine works. More recently, and definitely less controversially, is Woods of Ypres's final album Woods 5: Grey Skies And Electric Lights. Sure, it's depressing, but it's frankness and honesty elevates it from pointless morbidity into something far deeper and more philosophical.

And finally I can't forget to mention Monuments by Sheffield's own Northern Oak, the album I've seen played (in parts, at least) more than any other. If I fancy listening to it, I could put on the MP3s, or I could just pop to a local gig to enjoy it with an ale or five. 

Nostalgia of an Opeth nature

After the last rather lacklustre post about Heritage, it got me hankering for when Opeth did really awesome songs with only clean vocals. Here is my favourite. Harvest, from Blackwater Park. Worlds apart, really.

Opeth - Heritage

There has been a not inconsiderable stir in the metal community over the latest Opeth record. After months of discussions, interviews and previews, Mikael Åkerfeldt's newest vision is with us and causing all manner of confusion. We all know by now that it's not metal, but what is it?

It's not an easy question to answer. Many records will draw the listener in, play them a story or an emotion, stir something inside them. Not so Heritage. It won't pull you in, it won't tell you how to feel about it. It's a very difficult record to listen to properly, because it requires significant effort on the part of the listener.

The first vocal track, The Devil's Orchard, has been around a while now. I didn't know what to make of it when it first appeared, and I still don't know now. It's a sort of prog/jazz fusion that doesn't really sound like anything in particular.

The rest of the album contains a varied mix of material. The heavier prog rock style of Slither is countered by the peaceful and mostly instrumental Nepenthe. Häxprogress has some interesting riffs if you listen hard enough for them, but is otherwise unremarkable.

I'm not sure if the difficulties I have found with this record are due to a fundamental flaw in the record itself, or my own mental disconnect between what's going into my ears and what I know is Opeth. I can't help but think that if this was Anathema, undisputed (in my mind, anyway) kings of atmospheric rock, they would have made a far more immersive production out of the same basic musical style.

As it stands, Heritage has turned out not to be a particularly engaging experience. I almost hesitate to use the phrase "easy listening", not because some of the softer riffs and repeated rythmn aren't deserving of it, but because it's not an easy listen. I've read a couple of reviews before writing my own, and one phrase that seems to crop up is that the album "makes people think." I don't feel that it really does. The lyrics are not particularly groundbreaking. They're just presented in a jerky, inconsistent way as the songs lurch from riff to disjointed riff. It is not the level of songwriting I have come to expect from the band, and other albums I have bought recently (more on those in future posts) outshine Heritage in every respect.

Sometimes when I first hear a record, especially one that is designed to subvert expectations, I find that it doesn't "click." A few months down the line, I may give it another chance and be pleasantly surprised at how well it's aged. I don't know if that will be the case with Heritage, or if I will just get my prog kicks from elsewhere and leave the crushing-yet-beautiful prog death metal to the likes of Fornost Arnor, whose latest album, Death Of A Rose, is a worthy successor to Opeth's metal history.

Opeth - The Devil's Orchard

Opeth released the first single from Heritage this week, giving all of us a chance to hear the sweeping changes Mikael Åkerfeldt has been talking about these last couple of months. Before I go on, go over to Stereogum and have a listen to The Devil's Orchard.

I'll be honest, I'm not sure what to make of it. It's not the Opeth we all know and love. Less metal, more jazz-prog, lots of noodling and split-second tempo shifts. Anyone still expecting a death metal album will be sorely disappointed, I think, although those who appreciate the prog side of Opeth more than the death metal side will be more than happy. The minor chords and signature downtuned Opeth riffs are still there, albeit in a more subtly muted style. There's no way anyone could describe this track as up-beat, either musically, lyrically or stylistically.

After a few listens, it's growing on me. I think I expected something more like Harvest; prog-folk metal rather than prog-jazz twiddliness. It's going to take a few more listens, most likely along with the rest of the album, to get my head around it properly.

On Opethishness, and other neologisms

Opethishness is my Word Of The Day. It's used to describe musical style. It means, and I should hope this is self-evident, reminiscent of Opeth. And it is a fine adjective to have bestowed on any band, for Opeth are giants striding amidst the progressive metal crowd.

The band who have particularly earned this magnificent title today are Fornost Arnor, for their second album entitled The Death Of A Rose. Starting out deceptively soft, folky and melodic, it doesn't take long before complex acoustic riffs, clattering and battering of drums, electric guitar noodling and make-you-crap-yourself death vocals blast their way to the fore. The musicianship is tight, proficient and feels throughout the album that everything is exactly where it's supposed to be. For a self-release (albeit through their own label) this is one hell of a polished record.

One of the beauties of complex progressive metal like Fornost Arnor's, or indeed Opeth's, is that the band don't stick to a single sound. The crushing riffs come shuddering to a halt before a short melodic solo. The acoustic twists and turns of folk-inspired prog explode into death metal chugs and blasts. It keeps you on your toes, and never gets dull. Even the quiet parts, with their soft, almost gentle sound, are just a breather before the next sudden stop, sudden start, or complete change of direction. It's metal that is easy to enjoy the experience of really listening to. Progressive metal for the music lover.

If you like the sound of all this, (and let's face it, who wouldn't?) you can buy the CD straight from the band on their Witch King label for a mere £8 including postage. Or get both albums for only £12. Considering that HMV have priced up The Death Of A Rose at £10.99, there's really no excuse not to support the band directly. And buy a T-shirt. They're pretty damn cool, too.

Opeth - Heritage: Album art and Track listing

In a flurry of excitement, Opeth are releasing more and more details of their upcoming album, Heritage. It should be out in September this year, and to keep us all entertained until then, they've released some goodies.

First up is a full track listing. The titles all seem suitably Opethish and progressive, although with nothing else to go on we can only imagine. I'm assuming it'll follow Opeth tradition, with Heritage opening the album with a loud, complicated and thoroughly growly affair before calming down later on. All speculation at this point, though.

1. Heritage
2. The Devil's Orchard
3. I Feel The Dark
4. Slither
5. Nepenthe
6. Haxprocess
7. Famine
8. The Lines In My Hand
9. Folklore
10. Marrow Of The Earth

The other titbit  to ogle is the album art, again produced by the illustrious and illustrative Travis Smith. See what you think to this:

Click for big

How's about that, then, eh? It's certainly ... um ... not what I was expecting. Pretty cool in an incredibly progressive sort of way. Not sure what the heads in the tree is all about, and the odd little two-face devil seems to imply something. Not sure what, but something. The burning city and the queue of people must be ... something. Picking heads? Discarding skulls? Is it in any way a biblical allegory? I honestly don't know. 

Still, it's pretty. I suppose we'll have to find out what the songs listed in that lovely track listing are actually about before we can even begin to figure this one out.

Can 2011 get any better for metal?

On the exact same day as Wolverine's new album, Communication Lost, plopped onto my doorstep, I find out that Opeth have announced their 10th studio album via MetalSucks. Heritage, for that is its title, will be released in September on Roadrunner Records.

Mind = blown.