OPETH — The Roundhouse Tapes (review)

OPETH — The Roundhouse Tapes album cover Live album · 2007 · Progressive Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Pekka
I've been lucky enough to see Opeth live five times, one time of them being among my favourite gigs ever and one among the very worst. The latter was at a festival in bright daylight without a soundcheck I'm confident to say, as the sound was perhaps the worst live sound by any band ever. Absolutely horrible mix of bass drums, low noteless bass humming, guitar static and some more bass drums. But if we take Opeth indoors and give them a decent sound, then they're absolute killers live, combining their unique material tightly performed with the stand-up comedy of Mikael Åkerfeldt.

The one problem they, or let's say the audience, have left is the song choices. As the average length of an Opeth track is about ten minutes, they don't have time to play that many, and of course everyone wants to hear their favourites. This concert luckily offers a great selection of material from every one of their albums except Deliverance, which was well represented on Lamentations, and despite the tour still being theoretically in support of Ghost Reveries album we only get one track from that album. Ghost of Perdition is a great choice, as that's a track that has always been among the favourites of mine, but during the four shows I saw on that tour they never played it.

My Arms, Your Hearse and Blackwater Park each get two songs on the list and Still Life the very good rendition of Face of Melinda, but the gems of this release are the early tracks that get revisited. They hadn't touched the material from the first two albums in a long time, but for this date they dug out one song from each of them. The biggest problems I have with Orchid and Morningrise are the sound and the drumming department, and with both of them taken care of, it's a great joy to hear this material. The softer parts also very much benefit from the improved clean vocals of mr Åkerfeldt. And in case you were wondering, yes he pulls off all the transitions from growls to cleans and back pretty damn seamlessly. One point of interest is the addition of Per Wiberg's keyboards, and while especially on Watershed he is an essential part of the band's sound, these older tracks were composed without keys in mind, and most of the time he's reduced to just providing some background hammond and mellotron. Still an improvement, but it would be interesting to hear them completely rearranging some of the earlier material for live performances.

Great tracks, great performance, good sound. Overall an excellent live album.
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