Review Summary: An underlooked stride of brilliance.
Orchid is an album that tends to be viewed as a springboard for Opeth's future work, an infancy of styles where it all began, but not a ton more. When judged against the band's future masterpieces, it isn't too surprising that "they just weren't
there yet" is the default stance on this album. But what I believe is that, after an objective step back, Orchid is revealed as a self-contained work of excellence.
Orchid can and should be seen as a sister-album to 1996's Morningrise, an album that is also underappreciated when judged against the band's other work, but at the very least gets a massive amount more attention than Orchid. The reason I call these sister albums is that they sound incredibly alike in multiple ways, and not just that, they both share a sound that is isolated among Opeth's discography. Their next album, My Arms Your Hearse, introduced a marked stylistic shift that the band never strayed from completely until they went the route of prog rock in 2011.
The sound these albums share, that separate them from the rest of Opeth's work, is defined by a few things: there are no self-contained tracks (interludes don't count) that aren't incredibly long even for Opeth's standards, prevalent dual-harmonic guitar leads, free-reign noodly counterpoint bass lines, higher-range raspier harsh vocals, and perhaps most importantly, a distinct production job characterized by thinness, poorer recording quality, and a less chunky guitar tone. All that said, the production is nowhere near as poor as is the trope for many metal debuts. It's entirely listenable, and even depending who you talk to, it's good and serves the music and atmosphere well. I think there's a charm to the production and am happy these two early albums have something that so well distinguishes them.
The reason I've chosen to reference Morningrise so much is because everything worth salivating over on that album is present on Orchid. The only difference is that the latter is a tad rawer and a tad less-refined. Nonetheless, Orchid is still an absolute highlight in Opeth's discography for me. And the fact that it's a debut is ming-boggling.
Perhaps what I love the most is the trademark Opeth acoustic ebbing and flowing that so many of us have come to adore is present on Orchid in full swing: the acoustic work is emotive, atmospheric, melodically brilliant, and provides an excellent dimensionality to the pacing of the songs (as is standard with almost any Opeth album). The songs are grand and ambitious, all with non-linear structures and containing multiple movements, which again is something not unique to this album, but it probably employs these traits to a greater excess than any other Opeth album. The riffing on Orchid is also intoxicating, which compared to other Opeth albums, has a far greater focus on speed, technicality, and is often expressed as the interchange between two guitar leads, rather than the chunkier power-chord style found on MAYH onwards. Finally, another one of my most favourite features on Orchid (again found on Morningrise too) is the complex, even jazzy bass work by Johan De Farfalla. He's always doing something worthy of your attention, even to the point where his bass lines fight vigorously for your admiration over the (excellent) guitar work. In fact, this was such the case that Farfalla's insistence on bass lines with such compositional prominence led to his being dismissed by Akerfeldt.
What I want to be gleaned with this review is that Orchid is not some forgettable debut to be stuck on the shelf and ignored. It is a landmark of an album with a host of qualities, regardless of whether it was Opeth who released it or someone else. It both commands and deserves your attention, and you best see to it that you act accordingly if you haven't already done so. That is an order.
