Friday 18 November
Eventim Apollo, London
****
Swedish prog metal band celebrate three decades of music with audience choices
A work colleague was bemused when I told her I was going to London on Friday to see a prog metal band, ‘didn’t you do that last week?’ she said. I explained that I had been to see Porcupine Tree, who are prog rock rather than prog metal. But both bands transcend their genre labels, as demonstrated in this concert by opener Ghost of Perdition which begins with death metal vocals and guitars but soon embraces pastoral folk. Both bands also feature leaders who are endlessly restless, refusing to repeat themselves. As Opeth’s leader Mikael Åkerfeldt said during the gig, he could easily have rewritten the band’s classic album Blackwater Park (2001) for every subsequent album, just as Steven Wilson could have carried on writing new versions of Porcupine Tree’s classic Fear of a Blank Planet (2007). But both men have refused to compromise, sometimes alienating fans but also gaining new ones by constantly changing. The two men have also been close friends since Wilson worked on Blackwater Park and more recently their Storm Corrosion album (2012).
Åkerfeldt did please fans however by allowing them to choose the setlist by picking one song from each of the band’s 13 studio albums to celebrate Opeth’s 30th anniversary. This led to the slightly strange choice of Black Rose Immortal from the 1996 album Morningrise. Åkerfeldt admitted that his aim was to write a song for the first album which was over twenty minutes long. It wasn’t ready in time so he put it on the second album. He conceded that he built the track by stitching together short sections. The resulting song is episodic almost to the point of being disjointed, but the band made a good effort at playing it live for the first time.
Elsewhere, long-form structures worked much better, as on The Moor (from 1999’s Still Life) with its dreamy opening followed by driving metal riffs, and closing number Deliverance (from the 2002 album of the same name) with its mesmerising syncopated final section. And throughout the concert Åkerfeldt’s endlessly inventive songwriting was illustrated by songs that – remarkably – he began writing at the age of 19, obtaining the band’s first record deal by sending a cassette to a record company with 15 seconds of rehearsal footage on it. His amazing ear for unusual chord progressions and rich harmonies was evident throughout, particularly in the beautiful harmony vocals for Eternal Rains will Come (from Pale Communion 2014).
Åkerfeldt has worked very hard to get Opeth to its current level of success, and he is obviously enjoying it; his onstage persona was relaxed, taking time to tune his guitar and chat amiably to the audience between songs. His singing voice was equally relaxed, his death metal growls rich and evocative and his clean vocals searing and potent, often within the same song. The audience were in good voice too, joyfully singing along when Åkerfeldt played a short excerpt from a song by another great singer – George Michael’s Faith. New drummer Waltteri Väyrynen (Paradise Lost, Bodom After Midnight and Bloodbath) was equally relaxed, and seems to have fitted into his new band really well already, happily embracing Opeth’s prog metal, blues, jazz and folk with equal aplomb.
The video screens were vertically split into three, meaning that from the balcony seats it looked at times as if Väyrynen and keyboard player Joakim Svalberg were swimming in a sea of fire or water. The images occasionally felt slightly generic but there was a stunning video for The Devil’s Orchard (from Heritage 2011) with a terrifying opening image of a woman falling from a high building into the abyss, matching the existential despair of the Nietzschean cry, ‘God is Dead.’
Like so many gigs, this one was delayed due to Covid, so the band are now in their 32nd year. Let’s hope that Åkerfeldt and friends continue to record and perform great music for many years to come.
Nick Holmes Music 