VGRC

Opeth is one of the most famous metal bands of the current generation. As common with popular metal bands this band gets over praised frequently. Personally I used to be a huge fan but over the years my excitement has waned. Opeth is a band that is heavily praised by people often not really into metal, which means that some features of Opeth get singled out for being really innovative while they usually have been used before. Oh and then you have the hipsters who call this band the greatest in death metal history, who are the same people who love other not so special bands to bits for no clear reason.

Of course these are all things that say little about the actual music. Watershed is the 9^th album by Opeth, it follows the at times brilliant yet often lacking Ghost Reveries. Ghost Reveries had another big problem, over production. Most of the metal fans kind of lost interest in Opeth if they already were fans because of this and the gradual reduction in overall album quality. In general their most praised period is that of their first 5 albums, and I think that is with good reason. Opeth more recently has become rather stale with less songs that just spring out and make me go, "This is great." There certainly have been improvements; Mikael Åkerfeldt's voice has improved in both grunt-wise and clean-vocal-wise. While all in all this means that Watershed is a important album, will they be able to produce a album that features more good songs instead of interesting ideas? Will they try something new other than their standard fare of intersecting death metal parts with clean parts of progressive rock and various other genres? Will they go follow the Bolt Thrower/Running Wild route and just follow on the same path but improving upon it, or will they deteriorate further?

Watershed has been out for close to 2 years, which means I can look at it from a rather post-hype perspective, while giving it enough time to sink in and thus get a better judgment. This is important with any metal album as they do take longer to digest than say a pop album, unless if its St. Anger of course.

Watershed from the first moment its already clear that they fixed one of the main issues of Ghost Reveries, this is not a overproduced album. Yes its still very clean sounding, but without the complete sterility of Ghost Reveries. Every instrument sounds full and powerful. The mixing also is also well done. The bass could use a slight boost, but as it is it works nice. The keyboards are more in the background compared to Ghost Reveries. This is a good thing. Yet this album still sounds somewhat tiring to listen to.

As for the songs themselves, they all feel better than Ghost Reveries, though it's hard to pin down exactly why this is the case. It is a combination of many factors, from having written just plain better songs, better riffs, better production, better mixing. If I had to compare this album to their previous works I'd say it is Damnation mixed with a less doom-ey Deliverance. All in all this album is not really an evolution except maybe in keyboard utilization. However in this album's case it's not a bad thing.

This album is arguably the best real Opeth album since Blackwater Park. (Damnation is more of a album that could have been released as a side project) Solid riffs, well done drumming, decent basslines, etc etc for everything else. Everything just has been done more or less the same as before but just turned up a notch. I can't single out what is done wrong. It does not feel off either... it just isn't great. However this album is not quite as good as their first 5 albums, why? Again hard to pinpoint, is it the riffs? The fact that it's basically the same formula? The fact that it's still tiring to listen because of the production?

I can recommend this album to all Opeth fans, and metalheads who don't mind the classic Opeth transitions. In any case if you didn't like this album because of whiny vocals, I think you will find that this album does not have that problem. It's just an album with no errors but also with no few/greats. Yes they still sound unique, but that doesn't mean it's good does it?