After a strange period when a flood of concert tours suddenly swept across Europe — all announced left and right, only to be followed by one cancellation after another, especially from American bands (the calculated reasons behind that don’t really need spelling out) — this September’s Opeth tour across the old continent, running for a good two weeks, thankfully came through unscathed.
The band, with their ‘regressively progressive’ direction — something Opeth started intensifying in their material particularly after “Watershed” (2008), though echoes of it can be traced even further back in their history — represents, through their body of work, a gateway for fans of heavier music through which they begin exploring the pioneering and even the most obscure prog rock outfits that emerged at the turn of the sixties into the seventies. What Steven Wilson and Porcupine Tree are today as ‘knowing revivalists’ keeping the prog rock tradition alive, Opeth are on the other side of that coin — just in progressive metal. But there’s something more to it. Opeth are Opeth. Nobody comes close. Their musical story has taken those ambitious beginnings rooted in raw death metal and — experimentally and sensationally — carried that ambition into a format that hasn’t really had much to do with that genre for quite some time now.
Zagreb is fortunately close to Slovenia, and Opeth shows are not something you skip as a rule. “In Cauda Venenum” (2019, RockLine review) is a superb new studio album that’s once again more varied and interesting to listen to than its predecessor “Sorceress” (2016), which came across as just a little too ‘laid-back’. Retro-prog-rock laid-back, that is. And that occasionally came at the cost of those trademark Opeth quirks and art maneuvers that place this otherwise phenomenal Stockholm outfit in a very special spot at the center of the world’s progressive metal universe.
It’s 7:45 PM. Icelandic retro-rock outfit The Vintage Caravan takes the stage. An updated take on the psychedelic days of classic rock carved out by the likes of Cream, Vanilla Fudge — with flashes of Led Zeppelin in there too. A trio. Just a trio. Guitar/vocals, bass guitar and drums. Óskar Logi Ágústsson, Alexander Örn Númason and Guðjón Reynisson, who about a month ago wowed two unsuspecting Slovenian tourists wandering through Reykjavik, confirmed their performance brilliance at the Zagreb show. Very elemental. Rooted in the jam. In extended improvisation too — honed through intensive rehearsals — which naturally shows both in the live execution of songs and in the songwriting itself. The band doesn’t overthink it. They go after that primal, raw connection with energy and vibration, transmitting, transforming and delivering it as authentically and unfiltered as possible into a bravura rock conglomerate. From the first moment they opened their three-quarter-hour set with Whispers, taken from their latest and fifth studio album “Monuments” (2021), right through to the closing ‘Voyage’ track Expand Your Mind (which they launched into straight out of a drum solo), the band dazzled with a musical parade full of unpolished, feisty and abrasive rock that at moments — in its sheer driven energy — even drew comparisons to the earliest Rush (the 1974–1976 era). Sure, the band isn’t doing anything new. There’s quite a bit of this sort of revivalism around — from Swedish outfits like Graveyard, Horisont, Hällas and Witchcraft, to Germans Kadavar, and so on. Bottom line: an excellent choice of support act that delivered a brilliant opening experience and confirmed they remain on a fierce upward trajectory toward broader international recognition.
It’s nine in the evening. The venue is packed to the last corner. A large crowd of young fans of heavy music culture — proof, if any were needed, that heavy metal will never die. And then some. The air practically crackled with sparks from an impatient, concert-hungry crowd. Opeth genuinely surprised on this show — their debut appearance in Zagreb. That they delivered an excellent performance you’ve probably already figured out yourself, but what surprised most was a slightly tweaked setlist. Right from the top. They opened with iron-repertoire classic Ghost Of Perdition, which they’d played rarely, if at all, on the current tour. Usually they’ve been opening with the newer Svekets Prins. Ghost of Perdition had appeared in the setlist only once before Zagreb on this tour — three days earlier, at the Bucharest show. The crowd was eating out of the band’s hands in an instant.
Sound calibration was needed right at the start. As things settled, the phrasing became clearer, the interplay between both guitars rang out more distinctly, Akerfeldt’s vocals were centrally authoritative and clearly upfront, and Mendez’s bass lines punchy and firmly pronounced. The drums could have used a bit more sonic depth and punch (the kick drums sounded slightly thin), and the keyboards, as expected, pulled the short straw a few times during the set. Joakim Svalberg was equipped with no fewer than two Mellotrons (one mounted below the Nord keys, the other below the Hammond). Vocally, Akerfeldt is still in excellent shape, even when he’s tackling the growl lines. His voice remains one of the band’s main calling cards — whether clean singing or growling. The communication within the quintet, and especially along the front line of Akerfeldt-Akesson-Mendez, is rock solid, and it’s a pleasure to watch up close how the band members maintain constant eye contact, communicating through gestures and facial expressions — especially through the most technically demanding stretches of their often serpentine, many-branched compositions. In a word: the Opeth sound had arrived. Unshakeable and unblemished.
The big question mark was the newly recruited drummer, young Finn Waltteri Väyrynen. He came to Opeth straight from his previous employer, English doom/gothic metal legends Paradise Lost. If they were paying him to ‘not drum too much’ — or if he did drum, to drum exactly as much as needed and no more — it’ll be the polar opposite with Opeth from here on. He proved that throughout the show, capping his finest moment in the encore through one of the definitive highlights of this Opeth concert, when they tackled one of the most ambitious compositions of their career: the legendary Deliverance. Funnily enough, Waltteri Väyrynen was born the same year as the band’s debut studio album “Orchid” (1995). While Akerfeldt could be his father by age, Waltteri can always send Mikael out for cigarettes — because unlike Mikael, he has already played Zagreb. With Paradise Lost. The lad impressed and convinced on every front (even if his drumming is still racking up the miles).
Mikael Akerfeldt — main visionary, driving force and chief of the tribe — remains in 2022 the sharp-tongued wit and enthusiastic chatterbox he’s always been. The first longer monologue came before Demon Of The Fall (“My Arms, Your Hearse”, 1998), when Mikael noted that this was a track his then-Opeth bandmate and co-writer, guitarist Peter Lindgren, had claimed would become a massive hit. That, as Akerfeldt added with a hint of his trademark cynical humor, obviously did not happen. Alongside these entertaining tales from the early Opeth days, it became clear the band was genuinely taken aback by the reception inside Zagreb’s Tvornica Kulture — they clearly hadn’t expected anything like it. At one point Akerfeldt openly marveled at why the hell Opeth hadn’t made it to Zagreb years ago. The chanting and applause was at times so intense that Akerfeldt and company just stood there in silence, staring out at a packed venue. Perhaps all that boiling energy was what caused his sixth string to snap on the ‘green PRS’ guitar mid-song, at which point his tech swiftly handed him a replacement (‘white PRS’) guitar.
Opeth remain supremely tight. In the technically demanding sections, they don’t miss a beat. The chemistry holding the quintet together onstage is simply phenomenal. In the quietest passages — where Akerfeldt’s vocal sensitivity was accompanied only by the ‘timid’ yet mystical sound of the keys, never straying from the intensely dark and melancholic atmosphere the band’s catalogue is known for — the Mellotron sounded particularly lovely. In these more ‘intimate’ moments, which suit club venues especially well (and Tvornica Kulture is not far from that territory), the occasional loud outbursts from drunk and overexcited audience members rattled through those sections more than once, rather unpleasantly tearing at the carefully built wall of intense, brooding atmosphere. But even then, Opeth stayed firmly in the saddle throughout — sovereign, professional, completely focused on the job. Top drawer. Worth noting too: Fredrik Akesson, mid-song, casually retuned his strings to a different key without breaking stride.
Eleven songs total from this ‘vivid singular freak of heavy metal progressiveness,’ with the crowd — through sheer unbridled fandom and devotion during the encore — voting in “Watershed” classic The Lotus Eater, which hadn’t been on the Zagreb setlist. A nearly two-hour Opeth show. “Pale Communion” and “Still Life” were absent from the repertoire this time around, but the band balanced the set with a highly satisfying selection of choice cuts, with neither The Lepper Affinity (“Blackwater Park”) nor Hope Leaves (“Damnation”) missing from the bill. As said — the definitive peak of the show was undeniably the closing progressive-metal dark symphonic epic Deliverance.
Opeth confirmed their invincibility with the Zagreb show. The magnitude of the reputation of one of the most exciting progressive metal outfits around — a band that, through their own artistic doctrine over two decades, has defined the face of the modern, enduring world of metal in all its genre and cross-genre forms. Steely focus and exceptional performance power. The years, the miles, the experience — masters of their craft, plain and simple. Akerfeldt remains the sharp-tongued joker. The crew backing him: phenomenal. A concert that left intense feelings lingering long after we were well on the road back toward Ljubljana and on to Pivka. Oh, right — diesel in Croatia is 1.54 €/l, and a liter of unleaded is priced comparably to Orbán’s Hungary at 1.23 €/l. From now on, on road trips like this and similar concert odysseys, fueling up there is mandatory.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Edita Klemen
The Vintage Caravan setlist:
1. Whispers
2. Crystallized
3. Reflections
4. Innerverse
5. Forgotten
6. On the Run
7. Drum Solo/Expand Your Mind
Opeth setlist:
1. Ghost of Perdition
2. Hjärtat vet vad handen gör
3. Demon of the Fall
4. The Leper Affinity
5. Reverie/Harlequin Forest
6. Nepenthe
7. Hope Leaves
8. The Devil’s Orchard
—encore—
9. Sorceress
10. The Lotus Eater
11. Deliverance
