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Rating: Our beloved Opeth returns, two years after the beautiful, enlightened "Damnation" that brought out the more intimate side of the Scandinavian band's musical offering. Because of this, however, there were fears - perhaps justified - about what the future of Opeth would be: would they once again prove to be ingenious, eclectic, and sincere, or would we lose the fathers of prog-death forever? It seems strange, but both statements are correct. Why? Let's analyze this Ghost Reveries.
The beautiful cover introduces us to a different world, different because in this case, the feeling of desolation partially gives way to spectral, illusory, unreal coordinates. To make a literary comparison, we can invoke the unhealthy Gothic vision of Edgar Allan Poe. Listening to the opener, however, time seems to have stopped at the release of Still Life. Those deadly outbursts, the precise and powerful growl, the delicate arpeggios full of melancholy. Ghost Of Perdition is an Opeth song, undoubtedly.
Yet something is changing, and The Baying Of The Hounds confirms it. Maybe I'm just exaggerating small details, maybe I still don't understand what to expect, but in this song - perhaps for the first time in Opeth's career - Mikael uses his clean voice even when there are no acoustic inserts, creating a kind of well-achieved contrast between deviant gothic-death riffs and the sublime vocal performance of the singer.
Paradoxically, after only two songs, your skin already starts to quiver: you look around, search for glances that aren't there, hear footsteps among the gray shadows. You're already sad, but also scared: where are they, where are the ghosts?
It's Opeth who answers us, with the following Beneath The Mire, introduced by a riff that has little in common with death: gothic keyboards immerse the listener in an unexpected context, with the guitars hesitantly emerging gradually before Akerfeldt's explosive growl fades after a few seconds in favor of the clean voice. Another tempo change: a very light guitar comes along, together with simple keyboard chords. A brief interlude, a moment of peace before the terror: does the growl return? No, it was just a second. The ghost reappeared, only to hide again. It is electronic inserts that mark the end of the track. I don't know what purpose they have, but I fear it wasn't an excessively happy choice. But I could be wrong.
Atonement is instead anomalous: the oriental gait makes it mysterious, fascinating, while in this case, the electronics prove appropriate and offer truly unique sensations: Mikael's effected voice initiates a kind of spectral lullaby. Apparently soft, Atonement is rather a concentrate of madness, anguish, and calm. But is it really calm? Or is it just a truce waiting for the ghost's return? Nothing helps us understand, because the last minute is composed exclusively of a repetitive and reckless riff, reminiscent in certain ways of the intro of the beautiful Face Of Melinda.
But beware: it's time to get out of the four walls to search for the trees of Reverie - Harlequim Forest. It is perhaps the least flashy song on the album, because although interesting, it is the most "canonical" along with Ghost Of Perdition. After this melancholic eleven-minute journey, we're cradled by the ethereal atmospheres of Hours Of Wealth. But with Opeth, the surprise is always around the corner: a pause, brief enough, disrupts the song's balance: is that jazz I'm listening to? In reality, it's just an analgesic for The Grand Conjuration, whose violence alternates with a voice halfway between singing and whispering. No! Not now...! Is it him? Yes, the ghost is back... no, just an impression. Or was it really him? Hard to say: too many varieties of emotions, internal contrasts, sufferings.
Something is needed. That "something" is the last track of Ghost Reveries, the beautiful Isolation Years, featuring Mikael engaged only in clean vocals. Finally, the ghost is gone, at least for now.
What remains then? Fears, uncertainties, solitude remain. And the awareness of having a masterpiece in hand. The umpteenth of Opeth. A work undoubtedly different, complete, and fascinating (although inferior to Blackwater Park). We find the hardness of their beginnings, the sadness of Still Life and Blackwater Park, the anger of Deliverance and the deep malaise of Damnation. I'm not exaggerating: it is undoubtedly heterogeneous yet profoundly logical, it's a haunted cell after an hour of freedom, a spectral moon after a sunny day. We will remember this album for a long time.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Ghost of Perdition (10:29)
Ghost of Mother
Lingering death
Ghost on Mother's bed
Black strands on the pillow
Contour of her health
Twisted face upon the head
Ghost of perdition
Stuck in her chest
A warning no one read
Tragic friendship
Called inside the fog
Pouring venom brew deceiving
Devil cracked the earthly shell
Foretold she was the one
Blew hope into the room and said:
"You have to live before you die young"
Holding her down
Channeling darkness
Hemlock for the Gods
Fading resistance
Draining the weakness
Penetrating inner light
Road into the dark unaware
Winding ever higher
Darkness by her side
Spoke and passed her by
Dedicated hunter
Waits to pull us under
Rose up to its call
In his arms she'd fall
Mother light received
And a faithful servant's free
In time the hissing of her sanity
Faded out her voice and soiled her name
And like marked pages in a diary
Everthing seemed clean that is unstained
The incoherent talk of ordinary days
Why would we really need to live?
Decide what is clear and what's within a haze
What you should take and what to give
Ghost of perdition
A saint's premonition's unclear
Keeper of holy hordes
Keeper of holy whores
To see a beloved son
In despair of what's to come
If one cut the source of the flow
And everything would change
Would conviction fall
In the shadow of the righteous
The phantasm of your mind
Might be calling you to go
Defying the forgotten mortals
Where the victim is the prey
02 The Baying of the Hounds (10:41)
I hear the baying of the hounds
In the distance. I hear them devouring
Pest-ridden jackals of the earth
Diabolical beasts and roaming the forests
In wait and constant protectors
Calling you to sit by his side
Your self-loathing image in his flesh
A revelation upon which you linger
His words are flies
Swarming towards the true insects
Feasting on buried dreams
And spreading decay upon your skin
His eyes spew forth a darkness
That cut through and paralyze
Casts light upon your secrets
Forced to confront your enemies
His mouth is a vortex
Sucking you into it's pandemonium
Fools you with a helping hand of ashes
Reached out in false dismay
His body is a country
The cities lay dead beyond despair
Friends turned enemies unable to come clean
In a rising fog of reeking death
Everything you believed is a lie
Everyone you loved is a death-burden
So you take comfort in him
And you are receptive to stark wishes
No longer struggling to declare your stand
You would inflict no harm to others
They are unaware and in a loop of futile events
You are everything, they are nothing
Drown in the deep mire
With past desires
Beneath the mire
Drown desire now with you
Lined up verses on dead skin
The tainted lips of a stranger
Resting upon hers
And I embrace bereavement
Everything beloved is shattered anyway
I would devote myself to anyone
I would accept any flaws
I am too weak to resist
Tension vibrating with horror
Finding the outcast in my eyes
Pushing nerves on a puppet
Endless poison in my veins
Clean intent now tainted with death
And so, cold touch now inhumane
Every waking hour
Awaiting a reverie to unfold
Louder by the minute
The baying of the hounds
Calling me back to my home
03 Beneath the Mire (07:57)
Haunted nights for halcyon days
Can't sleep to the scraping of his voice
Nature's way struck grief in me
And I became a ghost in sickness
Willingly guided into heresy
Beneath the surface, stark emptiness
And you'd pity my conviction
Whereas I thought of myself as a leader
You'd cling to your pleasant hope
It is twisted fascination
While I'd ruin the obstacles into despair
And I'm praising death
Lost love of the heart
In a holocaust scene memory
Decrepit body wearing transparent skin
Inside, the smoke of failure
Wept for solace and submit to faith
In his shadow I'm choking
Yet flourishing
Master
A delusion made me stronger
Yet I'm draped in pale withering flesh
I sacrificed more than I had
And left my woes beneath the mire
04 Atonement (06:28)
Clear the fog that was veiled around me
And blurred my sights
Suddenly, I'm no longer aching
To honor my plights
Rising moon and my skin is peeling
Past undone
Suddenly, I can't justify
What I had become
06 Hours of Wealth (05:20)
Found a way
To rid myself clean of pain
And a fever that's
Been haunting me
Has gone away
Looking through my window
I seem to recognise
All the people passing by
But I'm alone
And far from home
Nobody knows me
Never heard me say goodbye
Never shall I speak to anyone again
All days are in darkness
And abiding my time
Once I am sure of my task I will rise
Again...
07 The Grand Conjuration (10:21)
Majesty
Faithful me
Pour yourself
Into me
Wield your power
Martyr's price
Stare me down
To the ground
The eyes of the devil
Fixed on his sinners
Slake my thirst
Eternal wealth
Heathen key
Round my neck
This poetry
Our blasphemy
Know the sounds
Of infamy
The hands of Satan
Assembling his flock
Pale horse rider
Searching the earth
Whispered conjuration
A belief takes form
Choking hand tapping
The veins in your throat
His orders in your mouth
A decree for domination
Beneath the tides of wisdom
Spins the undertow of hate
Injected seeds of vengeance
Usurper's eyes of the powerless
Clean path to his kingdom
Beckoning in the mist
The grand conjuration
Tell me why
Love subsides
In the light
Of your wish
Say my name
Ease the pain
Clear the smoke
In my head
08 Isolation Years (03:51)
There's a sense of longing in me
As I read Rosemary's letter
Her writing is honest
Can't forget the years she's lost
In isolation
She talks about her love
And as I read
"Die alone"
I know she's aching
There's a certain detail seen here
The pen must have slipped to the side
And left a stain
Next to his name
She knows he's gone
And isolation
Is all that would remain
"The wound in me is pouring out
To rest on a lover's shore"
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Other reviews
By HenryChinaski1
Opeth’s new emanation stands as one of their absolute best releases, and perhaps as THE album of the year 2005.
Make it yours, whatever your musical background may be. You will not regret it.
By Moro1
Opeth have finished climbing the peak and are now on a slight downward slope.
The album starts off terribly, rises significantly in the middle, then falls again at the end to leave a closing hope.
By malamela
The tributes Opeth made on this CD to Tool and early Dream Theater works is too much, and not justified.
To define it in a few words: Predictable, already heard, nothing new.
By fjelltronen
The sparkling melancholy burns in the sounds of guitars with dark distortions, the caresses of keyboards in the darkness of November nights.
The singer is alone, cries with piercing rage but simultaneously delights with notes of never forgotten purity.
