Opeth - Heritage (2011)

I don't usually do reviews like this because frankly what's the point of doing reviews for albums like this? In fact I've pretty much made it a point from the start of this blog to completely avoid albums like this one. But, this is unavoidable. I must, I just simply must! The sort of albums I speak of are the shitty ones and boy howdy is this ever one of them.

As a starting point to this review you should understand a few things. I love Opeth. I really do. I think Mr. Åkerfeldt is one groovy guy and people seem to think I even look like the gentleman. Neat. I also have an Opeth tattoo on my arm. Typical, I know, but for Blackwater Park a decade ago I just couldn't resist after a while. People will also say the band has been dead since said album and while I wouldn't say anything has come close to touching it since, it would really be an ass of a statement to say that the past four albums were bad. To each their own, anyway.

Before this album even came out Mr. Åkerfeldt started saying that he was fed up with death metal and had in fact been fed up with it for years. Odd, really, when you consider his involvement in Bloodbath as well as the continued death metal elements in Opeth. Well, as you probably know this is another Opeth experiment where they do something completely different to their usual style, sort of like 2003's, 'Damnation.' Problem here is that Damnation was in my honest opinion a beautiful album whereas, 'Heritage' is a fucking piece of shit.

'Heritage' is apparently Mikael's attempt at a purely progressive rock album, thus stripping all metal and especially death metal from Opeth's sound. So, therefore he figured, "Oh, that's right, fuck my longtime fans I'll just do something completely different this time around. They wont care! Why? Because I'm Mikael Åkerfeldt, motherfuckers, and they'll buy whatever I release!" Mikael, you son of a bitch! Y'see, Mikael, he be one clever lad and that's what a whole lot of us did... we bought the new album regardless and goddamn the day I decided to do that!

The album opens with the title track, which is one of albums decent moments and it comes in the form of a simple piano ballad thingy. Then comes, 'The Devil's Orchard,' which... is... just... strange. I'm not sure which 70's progressive rock Mikael was influenced for this song and the following eight songs, but this really doesn't sound like the prog rock I heard years ago. Ya know, bands like; Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Rush and Yes, bands like those. To top it off the song is painfully boring with the lame as fuck lyrics, 'God is Dead.' Yes, Opeth is apparently an anti Christian band now... great! I really don't need Mikael to tell me that God is Dead, but whatever as dull as this song is, it is actually one of the better ones. The same could be said about, 'I Feel The Dark' or 'Slither,' which is the albums fastest (still not metal though) song and apparently a tribute to Ronnie James Dio.

From here on we land on, 'Nepenthe,' which is not just awful, but completely sleep inducing rubbish. The following song, 'Häxprocess' bleeds together with Nepenthe so much that you don't even notice a new song has started, which is odd since the old Opeth probably would have just made it one long ass song. Anyway, 'Famine' ... Oh, this song can suck the devil's red hot fucking dick in hell! I think one of the things I always liked about Opeth is that they were capable of writing long songs that were interesting and devoid of filler material. Okay, most of the time at least. This song much like the previous two are slow and sleepy and if you're not in some sort of overly caffeined state it's fairly likely that by this point you'll be drifting away. Oh, but don't worry midway through this song there's some completely random flute wankery played by some random Swedish asshole that's likely to wake you up. And when I say wankery, I do mean wankery! It's not catchy, its not interesting its just random filler bullshit. Likewise the riff and the keyboards that go along with it suck hard too.

'The Lines In My Hand' is a short (under 4 minutes) song that honestly isn't bad. It's sort of catchy and the keyboards are not cool, hell even the vocals are not bad. 'Folklore,' the first five minutes at least, is probably the albums finest moment, but it just seems to eventually trail off there completely and then into another phase of utter boredom and sleepiness with one final instrumental called, 'Marrow Of The Earth' when the album finally concludes. In most cases I've already passed out at some point earlier and wasn't even aware that the album had ended.

What I don't get is why couldn't this album have sounded more like the old Opeth song, Epilogue' from, 'My Arms, Your Hearse?' Have you ever heard this song? Have you! Its probably the best song from the early years of Opeth and in all actuality the closest Opeth has ever come to creating genuine classic 70's prog. However I don't know if that was the exact intentions here. Nobody really knows other than Mikael who quite proudly says that he wrote all of the album. Maybe that's the problem though. Opeth isn't a band anymore, its a single man. What the fuck?! Do Martin, Martin #2, Fredik and Per suck so much that he wouldn't even use any of their input or is he just a arrogant jerk ass that needs all the attention. The world may never know.

It will be interesting to see where the band goes from here, but I do know that if they attend to keep this sound than I won't even bother when that album comes out. Oh, but it could get worse, it could! I heard something about a Mikael & Steven Wilson collaborative project in the works and that, my friends, is truly terrifying, especially if you heard the dreadfully miserable excuse of music that the last Porcupine Tree album was. I nearly void my bowels just thinking about it.

At any rate, I hate doing negative reviews and I see no reason to review them since that defeats the purpose of this blog entirely. If you enjoyed old Opeth you probably wont like this album but if you're looking for something different, prog-ish and sleep inducing than hot damn do I have the album for you, kids!

Now, everyone let us sing together, a one, a two, a three and on my lead, "Opeth is Dead, Opeth is Deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeead!"