Opeth

My Arms, Your Hearse

(c)(p)1998 Candelight

Review by Richard Stuart

Opeth has always stood out in the melodic death metal crowd as being something exceptional because of their prog rock influences - and "My Arms, Your Hearse" is as progressive as ever. This time, they've gone for a concept album, a kind of 'ghost story', and interestingly the last words of each song are the title of the next one.

There are still some acoustic sections, and still lots of melody, but this album is noticeably heavier than Opeth's previous album, "Morningrise". It's also slightly less technical than before (though obviously not as mundane as a 'verse, chorus, verse, chorus' type structure) and the songs are also a bit shorter - more round the 7-8 minute mark, rather than 10-20.

Another thing which has always made Opeth something that extra bit special is the vocals, which are sometimes growled (and the bloke's got a very powerful voice), and sometimes sung cleanly. The clean singing has always been of a high standard, but on this album it's even better -- more confident, perhaps. One of the best vocal performances on the album is in "Credence", an acoustic song (like the last track on "Morningrise") and the sudden "aahh..." about 57 seconds into "Karma" reminds me of "Close To The Edge" by Yes.

It's difficult to pick favorite tracks, but "The Amen Corner" deserves a mention for it's 'groovy' beginning -- and "Demon Of The Fall" has some incredible guitar melodies towards the end. It's pretty pointless for me to sit here picking out individual moments though, since the album works so well as a whole. Needless to say, Opeth have come up with another masterpiece.

Back to Index