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Opeth
Metaltown - 2009
Text: Tobias Nilsson Photo: Lunah Lauridsen
That Opeth has an impressive amount of fans in their homeland was easy to see as they managed to pull the largest crowd I had seen all day, as they entered the Black Stage.
Large crowd aside, most of the people I saw stood quite idly watching the show; there wasn’t much action to be found here. Then again, Opeth’s very special music isn’t really one to party down to; a cool dark room with some candles and incense would probably be a better fit than this boiling warm summer evening.
I mean, calm and introspective death metal, who has ever heard of such a combo before?
I wouldn’t say that a live event is the best setting to learn new music, especially so for advanced multilayered music such as played by Opeth; alas, live events is the only real experience I have with the band, and this has resulted in me not really giving them a fair chance before.
Maybe I’m warming up a little to them however, I don’t know, but in the end I felt that this had been a rather pleasant show, even though I still lack the wow experience needed to really get into it…
I’m no wiz at remembering titles, especially with bands I don’t know, but I can tell you that they played The Lotus Eater from their latest album Watershed, a song which leading-man Mikael Åkerfeldt explained that he had stolen the opening melody for from a very famous Swedish children’s television-show called Emil I Lönneberga.
Another song which I’m more or less positive showed up at one point was Ghost Of Perdition (unrelated trivia; both of these songs appear in the videogame series Saints Row, though not in the same game), and The Leper Affinity, opening track of their possibly biggest hit album Blackwater Park, was also mentioned and played.
Large crowd aside, most of the people I saw stood quite idly watching the show; there wasn’t much action to be found here. Then again, Opeth’s very special music isn’t really one to party down to; a cool dark room with some candles and incense would probably be a better fit than this boiling warm summer evening.
I mean, calm and introspective death metal, who has ever heard of such a combo before?
I wouldn’t say that a live event is the best setting to learn new music, especially so for advanced multilayered music such as played by Opeth; alas, live events is the only real experience I have with the band, and this has resulted in me not really giving them a fair chance before.
Maybe I’m warming up a little to them however, I don’t know, but in the end I felt that this had been a rather pleasant show, even though I still lack the wow experience needed to really get into it…
I’m no wiz at remembering titles, especially with bands I don’t know, but I can tell you that they played The Lotus Eater from their latest album Watershed, a song which leading-man Mikael Åkerfeldt explained that he had stolen the opening melody for from a very famous Swedish children’s television-show called Emil I Lönneberga.
Another song which I’m more or less positive showed up at one point was Ghost Of Perdition (unrelated trivia; both of these songs appear in the videogame series Saints Row, though not in the same game), and The Leper Affinity, opening track of their possibly biggest hit album Blackwater Park, was also mentioned and played.