Sweden’s Opeth have proved themselves one of the most original and creative prog-metal bands of the past decade. On recent albums such as “Ghost Reveries” and “Watershed” Mikael Åkerfeldt and his band balanced moments of delicate beauty with moments of brutal heaviness, and it was the way they seamlessly combined the two that was a big part of the appeal.
With their tenth album they could have taken the easy option of trying to repeat a successful formula. But instead they’ve taken an abrupt turn, and done something completely different.
Gone are the death-metal growls. While it still has it’s heavier moments it’s can’t really be described as a metal album. The whole thing has a warm, retro 70s vibe, with echoes of artists as diverse as King Crimson, Frank Zappa and Uriah Heep. There is still much here that wouldn’t have sounded out of place in the quieter moments of the last couple of albums, and they still eschew traditional song structures in favour of complex epics with constantly shifting moods. Mikael Åkerfeldt again shows how good a vocalist he can be when he sings in a ‘clean’ style, and he’s got a keen ear for unorthodox but beautiful melodies.
Even with death-metal stripped out, it’s an enormously varied album. It begins with a very simple unaccompanied classical piano piece, a gentle lead-in for the delights to come. The hard rock of “Slither” with it’s barrelling rhythm comes over as a very deliberate homage to Deep Purple, with a riff and solo that’s pure Ritchie Blackmore. Then there’s the strongly jazz-tinged “Nepenthe” and “Hāxprocess”. An undoubted highlight is the penultimate track “Folklore” with a dramatic closing section which has to be one of the most exciting pieces of music I’ve heard all year. It ends, as it began, with an instrumental. The semi-acoustic “Marrow of the Earth” starts out sounding like a Blackmore’s Night piece, but builds to assume a melancholy grandeur beyond the scope of anything that band have done.
While this is likely to disappoint some out-and-out metal fans, this is still a very impressive release, and a strong candidate for progressive rock release of the year. There is endless debate in prog circles as to whether the term should refer to bands who try to capture the actual sound of classic 70s progressive rock, or for bands who evoke the same spirit of adventure of music without boundaries. Opeth are a rare band that fulfil both of these, sounding both unapologetically nostalgic and absolutely contemporary at the same time. Almost nobody else can pull that off as well as Opeth can.
Anathema are a band whose music has changed a lot over the years. They started out playing doom metal, but later evolved towards avant garde progressive rock with strong influences of Pink Floyd and Radiohead. Very little trace of metal remains in their most recent albums.
Dream Theater’s first album without founder member Mike Portnoy has been one of the most eagerly awaited releases of 2011. Following his somewhat acrimonious departure from the band many fans loudly declared that the band were finished without their charismatic drummer. But others, including myself, had felt the band had been coasting for the last few albums, and wondered if the enforced lineup change might be just be the thing the band needed to shake them up and make them hungry again.
Judas Priest’s double album “Nostradamus” came out back in 2008. At this stage in their career, it seems that the veteran genre-defining metal act had decided there was no point doing just another generic Judas Priest album like 2005′s “Angel of Retribution” that marked the return of Rob Halford. So they went for something altogether more ambitious.
“Still Beautiful” is Mostly Autumn’s third live album in three years. A cynic might accuse them of milking the fanbase with yet another live release, but the success of last year’s “That Night In Leamington” and the two disks of “Live 2009″ does suggest there’s a market for a live document of every tour. This one is significant as it’s the first to feature Olivia Sparnenn as the band’s lead vocalist.
Yes are just about the last of the major-league 70s prog-rock bands still standing. While ELP still play the occasional festival headliner, and Roger Waters has recently been touring the Pink Floyd classic The Wall, Yes are just about the only one of the really big bands still putting out new material.
Canadian four-piece Blood Ceremony have been making a bit of a stir recently, as much for the theatrical nature of their shows as for their records. But as this disk shows, the actual music more than stands up on it’s own.
If they’ve heard more than one song, the general public only know Journey for their radio-friendly power ballads. But rock fans have always been aware of the other side of the band; the classy hard-rock outfit capable of filling quite major venues with their high energy live shows. In their eighties heyday there was sometimes a tension between these two aspects of their music. Interviews suggested the record company constantly demanding more ballads while at least some of the band wanted to rock out rather more. With less commercial pressure nowadays to be radio-friendly, this, like many of their recent albums, shows more of the hard rock Journey rather than the commercial power-ballad Journey.
I first saw the young blues guitarist Chantel McGregor at the Cambridge Rock Festival last summer, when she appeared low on the bill fronting a blues-rock power-trio, and simply blew everyone in the crowd away.