Watershed

In the past, I have had little trepidation about new releases from Opeth. While I was eagerly anticipating Watershed, I was also nervous. I had initially gushed all over their last album, Ghost Reveries, which was the first for Roadrunner Records, a label known for more mainstream and trendy metal bands. Ghost Reveries started to wear on me, as it lacked the complexity of earlier albums that have allowed them to stand-up over time. There was also the departure of guitarist Peter Lindgren and drummer Martin Lopez. Largely due to their shared influences, Lindgren always struck me as the perfect companion to frontman and principle writer Mikael Åkerfeldt and Lopez always carried the load of playing the highly complex arrangements and providing seamless transitions between their disparate song sections, while maintaining the brutality. Replacement drummer Martin Axenrot spent two years touring with the band and apparently brings a greater sense of dynamics to his style. Lindgren admitted to be not being wholly focused on the music and his replacement, Frederic Åkesson, apparently wowed Åkerfeldt with his playing abilities (no small feat). Credit Opeth for throwing a curveball to start the album, as “Coil” opens with a sense of immediacy amidst its acoustic 12-string guitars. The song carries the typical feel of a passage of one of their longer songs, aside from the soaring quality of Åkerfeld’s clean vocals and the subsequent introduction of a female part, which is a first from the band. Nathalie Lorichs provides a solid, emotional delivery, worthy of Anneke van Giersburg, which along with Åkerfeld’s slick guitar playing and an outro featuring an oboe, all complete quickly move into the next song, “Heir Apparent.” A slightly plodding, but thunderingly heavy riff carries the first minute of the song, until the vocals kick in, with Åkerfeld’s raspier-sounding death growl. Superficially, there is little surprising about this passage – brutal drums (perhaps the best drumming on the album) and triple-picked guitar riff that rounds with an arpeggio. However, it is in the intricacies of the production, that the listener finds the band adding in swirling vocals and layers of differing guitar and synth lines. The song shifts into a ridiculous, off-tempo riff before Åkerfeldt comes out with an uncharacteristically choppy guitar solo. The sped-up and stylistically different soloing, helped by Åkesson’s skill for re-working and improvising phrases around a main structure, permeates the album, adding another dimension to an already brilliant group. Unsurprisingly, the solo is followed by a quiet acoustic passage, which, surprisingly, features a flute accompaniment (marking an overt reference to their Camel influence). While this first passage featured smarter composition, the second acoustic passage is decidedly more jazz-inspired, with a lead bluesy, slide guitar. The rest of the song is mostly a rehashing of the earlier heavy riffs, with a few variations that lead to another series of obtuse, odd-timed riffs, with guitar and synth solos, before building to a coda. Suddenly, another mid-tempo riff, seemingly unrelated, comes in. Unless listening on headphones, one cannot pick up on the slight feedback that connects to this outro, which is good, but serves no real purpose, since it was completely disjointed.

“The Lotus Eater” is the first truly great track. The main phrase, with Åkerfeldt doing a call and response clean-death-clean-death vocal delivery, is a little bland, but, in another slight surprise, places the clean vocals against a blast beat and the death vocals against an upbeat major chord pattern. It also features a very good transition phrase, where a start-stop, odd-timed guitar riff if offset by Per Wiberg’s melodic keyboards. A strangely disharmonic lead guitar transitions into Åkerfeld’s main guitar solo, set against an intensely building backdrop. It all gives way to a classic Opeth progressive-jazz interlude, which is seemingly to being used as a bridge to another guitar solo… Instead, Wiberg jumps in with the “Holy Shit!” moment of the album – a funky, psychedelic Hammond organ freak-out. Even after this solo and its blues-funk backing rhythm guitars, the next passage maintains this funky, psychedelic vibe, despite its copiously heavy drumming and distorted guitars. To re-root the track in Opeth’s trademark darkness, an atmospheric, yet rather meaningless outro is added. From its opening piano lines to its post-chorus, “Burden” strikes a resemblance to “A Fair Judgment,” only with a brighter feel due to Åkerfeld’s soaringly clean vocals. This time, Wiberg provides a bluesier, Deep Purple influenced organ solo, which leads to an elongated, bluesy, Ritchie Blackmore inspired solo that I absolutely love. When the rest of the band drops out, Åkerfeldt switches to an acoustic guitar, initially carrying a later Blackmore influence, before the guitar is gradually manually down-tuned by Åkesson, creating a brilliant mess of disharmonic chords and scales.

Just listening to the first few minutes, it is obvious that “Porcelain Heart” is the single from the album. Just like the lone single from Ghost Reveries, “The Grand Conjuration,” it is relatively bland, by Opeth standards. The drumming has some nice fills during the intro, which also has a few guitar variations that are further down in the mix, but take the song to a higher level. The first 3 and a half minutes stick to a heavy-quiet dynamic that buries its complexity to keep things digestible. The Tony Iommi inspired guitar solo isn’t particularly inspired, but the complex drumming helps to distract the listener (probably not something that should be happening during a guitar solo though) until we are regaled by Åkerfeld’s three-note scale climb of “Ah, Ah, Ah.” To make up for this song’s shortcomings, it shifts into full on prog. The initial clean guitar solo is solid and then shifts into a complex acoustic passage. The outro is an improvement upon the earlier heavier riffs, with more progressive fills by the guitars added to complement the stellar drumming.

“Hessian Peel” uses its 11+ minutes very well, being the best track on the album. The bluesiest passage yet opens the track, with an acoustic solo, giving way to some great prog-rock combining an oboe and an acoustic and slightly distorted guitars, over Åkerfeld’s best singing on the album. Considerably more passionate than his crooning on earlier albums, Åkerfeldt has really developed a distinct voice. A brief prog-metal passage slides away to a few bars of acoustic prog, before Wiberg is left alone, playing some delicate piano lines that gradually slow and fade. A choppy organ starts to build in intensity and pace, before the doors blow off and the band comes in in full death-prog regality. Again, the guitar solo is nothing short of brilliant and dazzling, with its complexity and shifting phrase tempos. Following more death-prog and a short clean singing passage, there is bass guitar lead by Martin Lopez and an up-tempo, extremely percussive acoustic solo (I love percussive guitar playing, especially on an acoustic or clean guitar, in a metal setting). The final 2 minutes are played at an absurd time signature, with the band doing their most mesmerizing progressive death – the guitar riffs, a lead lick, the drumming and eventually a very eerie two-handed tapping phrase and organ.

After being so blown away by the shear brilliance of Opeth’s instrumentation and arrangements, closer “Hex Omega” is able to keep the listener hanging on. It is more classic Opeth – drumming that flies all over the kit and a massive, crushing guitar riff with a series of technical runs. The clean vocals of the verse, accompanied by clean guitars and a melltotron, are very strong and moving. The second half of the song is mostly a quiet mellotron solo, which is prog’ed up by a clean guitar solo, Åkerfeld’s crooning and jazzy drumming and cymbal taps. It may not be the most powerful end to an album, but it still gets the job done, with the band taking one last chance to show off their their more complete arrangements and technical abilities.

For long time Opeth fans, such as myself, Watershed can be viewed through multiple lens – there is some sameness and some overtly less progressive material, but there is also a more refined sense of songwriting as they better integrate keyboardist Per Wiberg’s contributions and vastly stepped-up guitar soloing. By the end of the album, the listener is assured that this is firmly still Opeth, which makes this album far and away better than most band’s best efforts.