Opeth

Let’s put it this way: Opeth now aren’t the Opeth of the mid-’90s or the mid-’00s. Older, wiser, better musicians, and better businessmen, Opeth, namely frontman/songwriter/elder statesman Mikael Åkerfeldt, have also changed their sound, if only to equal the bands Åkerfeldt admired as far back as we can all remember. Actually, the change isn’t new. The change dates back to 2011’s often misunderstood, but nonetheless incredible Heritage record, when Opeth closed the chapter on death metal and opened a new one on dark, progressive hard rock.

After 21 years of housing some of the finest metal acts known to mankind, British label Music For Nations closed shop in 2004. The label was folded in Sony Entertainment’s Zomba Record Group and mothballed until last year when Sony rekindled the legendary label’s fire.  So, we’re celebrating with an essential Top 10. 

Is The Book of Opeth essentially a glorified biography with slightly more detail than what used to be on Opeth‘s website? Decibel reviews. 

For years, Opeth toiled in relative obscurity. Caged to Candlelight Records for three fantastic albums and Peaceville for one stupendous full-length, the Stockholmites’ import-only status could’ve continued had Opeth’s new home, Music for Nations, not been a label proper.

A meeting of minds between Opeth’s big chief Mikael Åkerfeldt and Porcupine Tree’s Steven Wilson, Storm Corrosion is a down-beat, atmospheric heavyweight that is the sort of Weird Science fantasy wet dream prog-heads have been jonesing for ever since Wilson took over production duties on Opeth’s groundbreaking Blackwater Park. Their eponymous debut eschews any of…

We, the working class, salute the fine young individuals who are bidding farewell to another summer and returning to academia. To help you get through another grueling year of homework, idiotic teachers, standardized tests, and the realization that there are no jobs out here once you graduate, the Deciblog has carefully constructed a series of…

You write long songs. At what point do you go, “OK, I’m done. The song is complete.”? M. Lehto: A Collapse of Faith and also the previous album The Womb of Primordial Nature have long songs on them, no question about it. It’s something that worked for me naturally as I usually like to make…

Back when time was kept on watches and not phones (i.e., the period shortly after the demise of the trilobites) Swede Dan Swanö was producing records by Opeth, Katatonia, 59 Times the Pain, Millencolin, Coercion, and bunch of other “nobodies”. Decibel got a peek at Mr. Swanö’s “studio guestbook” when we inducted Katatonia’s Brave Murder…

Opeth’s Orchid existed among tape traders for almost a full year, either as a partial or full album with the songs cut in random places, before Candlelight unfurled it upon an unsuspecting public in May 1995.