OPETH — My Arms, Your Hearse (review)

OPETH — My Arms, Your Hearse album cover

Album · 1998 · Progressive Metal

4/5 · 2024-11-07
UMUR

"My Arms, Your Hearse" is the third full-length studio album by Swedish progressive death metal act Opeth. The album was released through Candlelight Records (Europe)/Century Black (US) in April 1998. It´s the successor to "Morningrise" from 1996 and there have been quite a few lineup changes since the predecessor. Bassist Johan DeFarfalla has left and has been replaced by Martín Méndez. Méndez was recruited very shortly before Opeth entered the studio to record the material for "My Arms, Your Hearse", so he didn´t have time to learn the songs, which resulted in lead vocalist/guitarist Mikael Åkerfeldt performing all bass parts on the album. Drummer Anders Nordin also left and he was replaced by Martin Lopez. So only Åkerfeldt and second guitarist Peter Lindgren remain from the lineup who recorded "Morningrise".

Stylistically "My Arms, Your Hearse" is the blueprint album for the sound Opeth would play and built upon on the next meny releases (until "Watershed" from 2008). A lot of the elements found on the subsequent Opeth releases (up until 2008) are found on "My Arms, Your Hearse". In that regard the first two albums stand as phase one of Opeth´s career and "My Arms, Your Hearse" is the beginning of phase two. "My Arms, Your Hearse" is generally darker, heavier, more brutal, and more consistent in style and quality than the preceding albums, and the songwriting is concise, intriguing, and varied. There are no parts here which don´t fit the song that they are a part of, or any unnecessary noodling or progressive ideas. Everything fits and belongs. Brutal riffs and death metal growling are counterpointed by mellow, melancholic, and atmospheric acoustic sections, male clean vocals, and epic melodic moments. The almost constant counterpoint or harmony lead guitar themes and/or riffs from the first releases are not the main guitar riff style any longer, although Opeth still deliver some beautiful, soaring, and epic leads when that is called for. Just take a listen to album closer "Epilogue" for proof of that.

The band sound transformed with new drummer Lopez delivering a more organic, fluent, and varied drumming style than the stiff and unimaginative playing style of Nordin. It´s a huge change and it has great impact on how well the tracks flow and how well the dynamics of the tracks work. While Åkerfeldt performs clean vocals on "Morningrise" (and a few on "Orchid"), "My Arms, Your Hearse" is the album where he ups his game and sounds like he means it. His clean vocals are tasteful and melancholic in tone, while his death metal growling is majestic and brutal. He occasionally performs some higher pitched screaming/snarling vocals, which provide some parts of the album with a blackened touch, but other than those moments and a few other sections, "My Arms, Your Hearse" isn´t particularly black metal oriented or even blackened death metal oriented.

"My Arms, Your Hearse" features a dark, brutal, and powerful sounding production job, which suits the heavier and and gloomy material well. It´s not as detailed or clear sounding as the next couple of Opeth albums, but there is a charm to the rawness and savage nature of this sound production, which no other Opeth album features. Soundwise its closest relative is "Still Life" (1999), but that´s only natural as it´s the direct succeesor to "My Arms, Your Hearse". "My Arms, Your Hearse" is often forgotten or just not mentioned when speaking of the greatest Opeth releases from phase two of the band´s career, and while I do agree that there are more accomplished releases down the line, this album is still a massive progressive death metal release, deserving much more attention than it gets, and a 4 - 4.5 star (85%) rating is fully deserved.