OPETH — Blackwater Park (review)

OPETH — Blackwater Park album cover Album · 2001 · Progressive Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
Stephen
Listening to Opeth's music can't be done while driving or in a happy mood, you have to focus and dedicate a specific amount of time to digest every aspect they offered here, but if you're able to enter the atmosphere created by the band, the experience is rewarding. "Blackwater Park" had received extremely-mixed receptions, from an elegant masterpiece status to rubbishy-bored album. After multiple listens, my opinion felt in between, above the borderline of mediocre, to be precise.

The strong point of this album is it has an excellent production, a perfect musical delivery by the band especially how Åkerfeldt alternated his vocal style from growl to clean, and most of the songs are great. However, couple of tracks are quite dull such as "The Leper Affinity" which just circled around and moves forward with no clear destination or the title track, probably the worst here, a lengthy track with an absolute boring arrangement.

The greatest tracks they made here are definitely "Bleak" and "The Funeral Portrait", no doubt about that. Take a look at how Opeth combined the acoustic and electric guitar forming a thrilling riffage on "Bleak", the smart switch of vocal, the melodic insertion, and even the jazzy short solo passage. On the other hand, "The Funeral Portrait" swayed on a progressive metal texture with an uptempo rhythm, dynamic riffs, and a lot of screaming vocals. I also like the slowtempo balladic experiment in "Harvest" and the bluesy solo is nicely done. The single, "The Drapery Falls", influenced by Pink Floyd with a gloomy background nuance and quite good but tends to be boring and flat when the growly part came in. My last fave track on this album is "Dirge For November", a dominating bass sound at the start before exploding to a heavier part with a beautiful melody lines.

The problem with this album is the repetitive pattern of acoustical/piano intro followed by an explosive rhythm, growl/clean vocal, sudden stop before fading out, everything is too predictable. And like I said at the start, this one is a mood-dependence album, usually it's very hard to listen to this album entirely at the same time, but you have to do that to grab the whole idea of "Blackwater Park". An acceptable 3.5 stars album, not more than that I guess.
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