Label: Nuclear Blast Records
Release date: 02.11.2018
Mixed by: David Castillo
Album length: 88.10
Genre: Progressive Rock / Progressive Metal / Death Metal
Opeth are one of the more popular bands around today. They started out as a downright peculiar death metal story, full of strikingly catchy experimentation, one that put them right at the front of the most exciting death metal acts of the nineties. Over time they’ve drifted into prog-rock revivalism. “Heritage” and “Pale Communion” hinted at it, and the current “Sorceress” confirms it for good. Plenty of die-hard fans of old Opeth, who saw the band’s early catalog as the best death metal had to offer in terms of genre evolution, have written the band off. On the flip side, the band has dragged along crowds of music lovers who don’t necessarily listen to metal at all. Add to that the portion of the metal crowd that managed to “digest” the band’s new musical vision, one that rules out death metal “grunting” altogether. The key element that let Opeth get away with this is really Akerfeldt’s vocal, which in its clean range delivers a one-of-a-kind, instantly recognizable character. So the band has successfully grown its fanbase, and what’s funny is that most of those fans probably never even stopped to think that the new Opeth are in fact serving up reheated soup of the ideas the legendary prog-rock bands came up with at the turn of the sixties into the seventies. Which means Opeth may well be overrated musically these days, since their post-millennium evolution is in many ways retrograde.
Setting that aside, and judging by what this new live document delivers, we have to conclude that Opeth still play absolutely top-notch live and tackle their setlist with force and as much fire as they can muster. Convincing in every way. Sonically, meaning both production and performance. Their shows are always a must. Whenever Opeth swing by our neck of the woods, most often at the Metaldays festival, as was (most recently) the case in 2017 (that show came with some technical mishaps, mind you), you simply go and watch Opeth. Because they are and remain a live treat, regardless of that first paragraph about the stylistic “retrograde” transition, which was meant mostly as a broader discussion about how the new Opeth might be a slightly overrated band these days.
Anyway, “Live At Red Rocks Amphiteater” was recorded at the famous venue in Colorado on 17.05.2017. It’s the band’s fourth live document overall, and a true snapshot of the band’s creative reach in 2017 and 2018. A reflection of the band’s musical vision for 2017, in other words. So the setlist is mostly material from the post-millennium era. The band only touched on the nineties in passing this time, and in evolutionary terms delivered the most interesting track of the set. That’s Demon of The Fall from the cult third album “My Arms, Your Hearse” (1998), an album still fully steeped in (prog) death metal, where the band pulls off an incredible atmospheric leap in recreating an outstanding piece of death metal maneuvering live. Akerfeldt’s growl remains top-class, and the song itself shows exactly what made Opeth so interesting in the nineties, when they were basically setting new standards in death metal on their own. You can conditionally add the superb closer Deliverance to that group, which is one of the set’s highlights, along with the “younger” Ghost of Perdition and Heir Apparent. Otherwise, though, this setlist is tailor-made for those Opeth fans who swear by the era of clean vocals and prog-rock revivalism, and by all three of the band’s most recent studio albums.
The show always comes with Akerfeldt’s sparkling wit. That slightly annoying, nasal tone he uses to tease the crowd between songs, where you can never tell whether he’s serious or just taking the piss, remains, along with his polished black-humor routines, one of the essential ingredients of every good Opeth show. This time, though, it’s too much. Consider that the album has 88 minutes of playing time, which is already pretty little to begin with, especially given the band’s catalog. A good bundle of extra minutes of music gets lost precisely to Akerfeldt’s lavish talking between songs. So that’s one minor minus. The second minus is of course that the band doesn’t satisfy the tastes of old-Opeth fans and new-Opeth fans equally. The scales tip decisively in favor of the latter. The sound production is excellent, though. Perhaps also because the mix was handled by David Castillo, a guy who, as a sound engineer, had a hand in shaping the sound of “Watershed” too. The building blocks of the sonic picture are arranged exceptionally well. Excellent contrast and “coloring.” The soundscape is filled out just right. It’s a pleasure to listen to, since every single detail of the performance comes through clearly.
This review covers only the audio release, but “Garden of the Titans: Live at Red Rocks Amphitheater” is also available on Blu-ray and DVD. Judging by the video below, it’s definitely something Opeth fans won’t be resisting for very long.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
rating: 8.0 / 10
Track list:
1. Sorceress
2. Ghost of Perdition
3. Demon of the Fall
4. The Wilde Flowers
5. In My Time of Need
6. The Devil’s Orchard
7. Cusp of Eternity
8. Heir Apparent
9. Era
10. Deliverance
Lineup:
Mikael Åkerfeldt – vocals, guitar
Martín Méndez – bass guitar
Martin Axenrot – drums, percussion
Fredrik Åkesson – guitar, backing vocals
Joakim Svalberg – keyboards, piano, mellotron
