You got metal in my prog! No, YOU got prog in my metal!
[Video][Website]
[6.57]
Michaela Drapes: Rollicking syncopation, melodramatic clean vocals, a killer shreddy guitar bridge, plush production – and, oh yeah, God is dead! Opeth’s created a full-on arty-farty prog metal extravaganza, and though technically phenomenal, there’s a slight undertow of over-intellectualization that drags things down a smidge. Sometimes teen angst and middle age wisdom just aren’t a good mix.
[6]
Brad Shoup: I’ve never been favorably inclined toward the last ten years’ worth of prog-metal. Which is dumb, especially cos I’m fine with, say, the often-campy histrionics of funeral doom. Thankfully, Opeth’s making it easier on me, dangling a wicked guitar line that reminds me of my old favorite, Fugazi’s “Arpeggiator”. After charging out of the gate, they ease into an organ/trap kit duet, eventually touching down with their rendition of The Wall. Oh, and there’s some further organ straight outta Niemen in there somewhere. It’s a nice enough journey, but I’m too taken by the individual pieces to care about measuring the weight of the track. Obviously, disjointed phrases of poorly-translating poetry are a metal hallmark, and I’m not going to count off for lines like “demon fades from the hole” or “stigmats revealing horizon” when it’s about the reception, not the analysis. Looks like Opeth’s entered their Ulver phase, and that’s a great place to be.
[7]
Alex Ostroff: Intricate guitar work and wailed declarations that God is dead less than two minutes into the song? I’m not sure what the context for listening to this is, or when I would do so in my day-to-day life, but damn if this isn’t interesting stuff. The descent into mellow keys and drums and what might be sitar and glockenspiel halfway through feels like Grieg playing jazz fusion atop a mountain. I’m definitely impressed by the song’s various parts, but I can’t quite hear them together as a whole, and I’m not sure if I enjoy it as much as I appreciate it.
[6]
Anthony Easton: The complexity and sophistication of the musical textures on offer here, betray the sub Nietzschean banality of the lyrics –but that’s one of the chief problems of metal isn’t it. Also, the percussion and keyboards are much more interesting than the guitar, which is a little new, and something I appreciate.
[7]
Mallory O’Donnell: It’s puzzling to me that we live in an era when my beloved dance-pop music is, in the main, more abrasive than (my high school nemeses) metal and punk. I think I like that, though, much as I like the story a death metal fan told me about going to a show of same that sounded more like a giant love-in than anything in any jam bands’ imagination. We ought to be surprised by our antipodes. I’m surprised by this – far more Rush than Metallica, a tiny opera set deep in the pagan woods that are yet.so.masculine.
[7]
Ian Mathers: I kind of love that parts of this long, winding track remind me of classic rock radio (including the proggier end of it) or post-rock (something about the instrumentation or the melodies), neither of which I expected from Opeth. For a song about God being dead, this is surprisingly cheery (as opposed to despondent or triumphant), which helps me ignore the lyrics and just focus on rocking out. Less metal in the terrifyingly technical sense than I expected.
[6]
Jonathan Bogart: I’m pretty sure the reaction Opeth were hoping to provoke was not laughter, but when they went into the organ section that sounds like a Bach fugue being used in a campy horror movie, I cracked up anyway. Partly because I’d been thinking about how much like the Doors the whole thing was — the drum-solo bit sounds exactly like a “Riders on the Storm” breakdown — and the only way I know how to deal with the Doors is to laugh at them. And partly because I don’t know shit about metal, but I’ve started to like metal more than punk, which would have horrified the me of five years ago. Blame the identikit garage-snot bands annointed by the blog gatekeepers every year; blame the fact that I never have to hang out with metalheads. Or maybe in my old age I’m just starting to like it when people try.
[7]