Review Summary: 'pethy's second album, consisting of 5 big, dumb, overblown, aimless metal "songs" about.... black metal stuff. WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.
Debate rages: "Blackwater Park is Opeth's best album!" "No! Still Life is!" "No Ghost Reveries is!" Just read some threads on this very site. You’ll see for yourself. It never ends. I don’t know which is their best and I don’t care. All of the aforementioned albums are excellent. But I do know which one is not their best. Guess which one… Yes, I firmly believe that Morningrise is not only Opeth’s ****tiest work ever, but also one of the most poorly executed rock/metal/whatever albums I have heard. All the Opeth fanboys that think Morningrise is their best album finally have a review to go ape **** over.
Allow me to state my case.
Alrighty, so I press play on my stereo and the first song begins. Advent fades in and starts off with a pretty good pace. It starts off fairly well and leaves a decent first impression. But a couple minutes in, it already starts to sound tedious, as there have already been several different parts/riffs/whatever played, without any sense of direction whatsoever, which is one of the two things that ultimately kill the album.
All five of the songs exceed 10 minutes in length……………………..why? It can often be a good idea to end or begin or bookend an album with 10+ minute long songs, as Opeth did with Still Life or Blackwater Park. But when your album consists of nothing but this, you are nothing short of abusing the use of epic songs, especially when your songwriting is in the kind of shape as can be found here on Morningrise. The only exception being, in my opinion, Deliverance, simply because the songwriting is so sharp. The tracks wonder around aimlessly with no sense of direction and with no sense of songwriting prowess whatsoever. If you were to pick a random part in one song then listen to another random part of the same song, they would sound like two completely different songs. The disastrous, big dumb oaf of a song, the “epic”/OVERLONG/whatever Black Rose Immortal is a perfect example of this. I mean, what where they trying to prove by making this thing 20 minutes long? That they could make a 20 minute long string of different little half-baked riff ideas? This is about as aimless as the band ever got, right here. Allow me to make a humble little diagram of sorts as a way of visualizing the thing’s song structure:
In chronological order:
Little drum fill/ riff/another riff/ another riff/ another riff/ another riff/ another riff/ another riff/ another riff/ another riff/ another riff/ another riff/ another riff/ song ends
Epic huh?
Reason number two why you should go buy something like Ghost Reveries instead of this: the vocal performances. I think Mikael Akerfeldt is a great singer. Keyword: “is,” not “was.” Way back in the day when they made this album, his vocals were nowhere near as good as they are now. When he delivers the very first line of the album in Advent I literally laughed out loud the first time I heard it. He sounds ridiculous, unlike his vocals in Ghost Reveries or Blackwater Park, which are haunting, evil, and even intimidating. The growls are deep, monstrous sounds that could possibly give nightmares to the fainthearted. On Morningrise? NO. They are high and raspy and really rather goofy sounding.
The last track is not quite the worst thing here, but it definitely ain’t my favorite. It tries to create a sad atmosphere with its acoustic guitars, reverb heavy drums and bluesy, dreamy leads. Some of the leads succeed sometimes, but most of the time it just sounds overblown and ridiculous. Roughly halfway through the song changes, with distorted guitars leading the way, and then about a minute or two later it switches back to acoustic guitars and offers no good reason why the distorted guitar part was even in there. It completely ruins the “flow” of the song. Which could have been cut nearly in half anyway if they wanted to go for something coherent. Why listen to this when you can listen to awesome mellow songs like A Fair Judgment or Windowpane or Harvest?
Lyrics. Lyrics. Lyrics. So what are the songs about? Mikael’s lyrics have never been very obvious about their meaning, but there’s a thin line between clever, cryptic lyrics and stupid black metal nonsense. I have no idea what the songs on Morningrise are about. Secret orchards, autumn’s proud treetops, lips trying to form “because”, and slopes are just a few of the wide range of subjects covered herein... I have no idea what the songs are about, and frankly I don’t care.
...The bass line that begins at approximately 3:31 in Advent. What is that??????? What possessed the bassist to record himself just sort of sliding up and down the neck of the bass and calling it a bass line????????????????????????? It’s not even in tune with everything else and I cringe when I hear it. Just though you might want to know… Apart from that, the instruments do sound good.
So the good stuff… What about the album do I like? Some of the riffs themselves. They do have a few really cool riffs. They really do. The production I do kind of like as well. It sounds old school. It sounds kind of bad but in a charming way. And then-drummer Anders Nordin has chops. There is no doubt about it. Once in a while I can get past all the negative aspects of the album and use it for some background music when I don’t want the room to be completely silent. Although (or because) the album is long, incoherent and pointless, it is quite a dense album and trades memorable songwriting material for sheer replay value.
So the album is bad. I think I drove that home pretty well and came up with about a million different ways to say it. And here I am reviewing my own review... But according to the review, the album’s production is good and a few memorable riffs and acoustic pieces can be found here and there.
