Понедельник 3 Окт 2011, 17:16
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ae/Opeth-Heritage.jpg
Yep, it seems like it's time to say goodbye to yet another once mighty band. I don't consider myself to be *too* much of a close minded metalhead or anything. Hell, I even listen to Tool, for fuck's sake. The point is, I really, really don't want to critique this record for not being metal, because frankly, I think just about ANY fan of this band should have seen this coming miles away. Mikael Åkerfeldt is simply tired of metal. The poor man just wants to be happy with his grandpa prog rock and do homage to his…"musical heritage" or some bullshit, I don't know. I mean to judge this album with an openminded attitude…it doesn't need to be metal in order to be good, after all. And indeed, when I listen to Heritage, I'm not really looking for metal. I'm just looking for something, ANYTHING that won't fucking put me to sleep.
The boredom is constant throughout, right from the very first track, a completely worthless piano piece that goes absolutely nowhere. Seriously, Silhouette was much better than this crap, and hardly does anybody ever give Anders Nordin credit. Afterwards, The Devil's Orchard kicks in with half assed riffs, WAY too much fucking keyboard and some admittedly catchy vocal lines. Mikael Nietzschefeldt is dead, indeed. He is fucking DEAD.
It's amazing to me how many songs have sections which are basically Mike singing softly, while playing some soft guitar notes. Those are the adjectives that come to my mind: soft, slow, inoffensive, the whole album is like that. Nepenthe, for example, is a fucking snoozefest. You get the feeling that NOTHING is happening in the song at all until some decent solos kick in. Now that caught my attention, alright. Will anything else happen? Nope. Same thing with Häxprocess, which is apparently Mike's new favourite Opeth song. He must really like tracks with a reeeeally slow build-up made of slow, boring melodies and background effects with some woman crying. I too feel like crying at this point. I'm bored out of my mind. Do I need a "deeper understanding", or is this really just a pile of donkey feces?
There's of course the Dio "trbute song", which is made of merely bearable riffs and a vocal performance that surely isn't quite as impressive as the man himself would have liked. Oh, and it's really short, about three minutes long. I know, let's add a completely useless acoustic outro. And cheese it up with some keyboards, too. I'm joking, there are no keyboards, I would have killed myself otherwise. If you really want cheesy shit, listen to Famine and revel in Jetropeth's glory. Jesus christ.
Much has been said about the "disjointed" songwriting, of awkward transitions. Honestly, they are nowhere as annoying as some people make them out to be (except for Famine, fuck that song up the arse). Certainly, the transitions are not what's wrong with this album, in general. The half-assed songwriting is the problem. The impeding and absolute fucking BOREDOM. The total absence of metal doesn't even upset me THAT much, it's just that Opeth is a band capable of so much more than rehashing ideas that were already explored forty fucking years ago.
Heritage is merely decent. Even though it really annoys me sometimes, I can't say that it's a piece of shit because it simply isn't. Indeed, it's not the music itself what pisses me off, it's Mike's new attitude of thinking lowly of metal, and the fact that he's resolute about Opeth's new direction. Really, Heritage should have been a sideproject, but no. Instead, he has ruined Opeth for good.
God is dead, folks. THIS is how he has chosen to "liberate himself from the shackles of metal". Yeah, fuck you too, Mike. Apparently, Heritage has sold quite well too. I hope Mike uses the money to build a time machine so he can go back to the 70s and be all happy. I won't fucking miss him.
R.I.P. Opeth.
Heritage
The Devil's Orchard
I Feel the Dark
Slither
Nepenthe
Häxprocess
Famine
The Lines in My Hand
Folklore
Marrow of the Earth