Palate Cleanser

Been meaning to get around to this one for some time, but for some reason my music-critiquing skills feel atrophied these days. Lately I've been digging Opeth's current release, Watershed. I'd heard some of their earlier songs and liked them, especially several from their "mellow" album, 2003's Damnation, but have been listening to Watershed front-to-back pretty frequently.

Opeth is primarily the brainchild of guitarist/songwriter Mikael Åkerfeldt, and Damnation aside, much of what I've heard of their catalog consists of extended arrangements of post-Metallica/Iron Maiden riffage, lots of loud-soft-loud dynamics, and the requisite Cookie Monster vocals. Ordinarily I have very little patience with that vocal style, but musically Opeth are talented and thematically ambitious.

One standout in the lineup was former drummer Martin Lopez, whose propulsive syncopations were something different for the genre, most reminiscent of the style of Tool's Danny Carey, who for my money is the best all-around (if not prolific enough) rock drummer working today. New drummer Martin Axenrot, who had been Opeth's touring drummer for several years and finally took over the job full-time as Lopez coped with health problems, proves to be an excellent replacement.

Watershed starts off innocuously enough with Coil, a quiet, pensive intro featuring Åkerfeldt and female vocalist Nathalie Lorichs (Axenrot's girlfriend) trading brief verses of loss and bereavement, a common thread in Åkerfeldt's lyrics. In fact, it may be this as much as anything that separates Opeth from the average "death metal" band -- rather than the usual "Turdklog, Despoiler of Porcelain" barking the script to Hostel over and over again, Åkerfeldt treads a more universal lyrical path. On Watershed he outdoes himself, evoking a myriad of synonyms for "melancholic", especially on the slower numbers.

The key to Watershed being something special and transcending its typical categorization is the addition of keyboardist Per Wiberg, who contribues enormously to Åkerfeldt's bleak vision. Wiberg's organ and mellotron (yes, dammit, mellotron) broaden the band's soundscape, complementing the lyrics and moving the overall sound forward. As Coil gives way to the nine-minute pounding of Heir Apparent and that second song develops, Wiberg's role in the aggression increases, accentuating Axenrot's furious blast beats with minor cadences right out of the Jon Lord playbook. Considering the usual tropes of the genre, it's a bold move, and sets the stage for the rest of the album.

Even the hardest tracks contain some sort of little quiet invention to break the action up a bit. The Lotus Eater and Hex Omega are rife with Seventies prog references, such as Deep Purple and King Crimson, adding contrast and depth to the weighty riffing. Some of the mid-song miniatures wouldn't have been out of place in Songs from the Wood-era Jethro Tull. There's even a mellotron version of Porcelain Heart on the special edition CD, called Mellotron Heart.

Burden is probably the most conventionally accessible song here, and its Phrygian/Aeolian modalities conjure up Ulrich Roth-era Scorpions as much as anything. While slow and plaintive, it features a burst of fantastic Lord/Blackmore interplay from Wiberg and new lead guitarist Fredrik Åkesson. Seventies prog references abound throughout Watershed, but maybe nowhere more so than here. Rather than sounding derivative or even an homage, it's an expansion of the sonic palette.

Perhaps the centerpiece of the album is the penultimate track, the eleven-minute-plus Hessian Peel. Starting with a sinuous, vaguely creepy melody on the higher strings, Åkerfeldt weaves a metaphorical tale of loss, nodding to Zeppelin with a couple of backward-vocal verses, heading into a stately Aeolian modal riff that builds into a short, punchy organ break at the halfway mark, before descending into a pummeling second-half maelstrom, punctuated with a great diminished-scale solo from Åkesson. Here the band sounds like they're reaching their destination on the album, all parts thrumming with energy and conviction.

The special edition CD closes with a reverential cover of Robin Trower's Bridge of Sighs, which really should be a radio track, even on a classic station. Watershed takes a few listens to really get into as an entire album, primarily because of the use of growl vocals, but Åkerfeldt uses them judiciously, with a vision at work for the album as a whole. It's an impressive effort that makes the term "Swedish progressive death metal" actually mean something.