Ghost Reveries

Product Information

Smith, Rod (September 2005). "Opeth Ghost Reveries – Wargasm of the Worlds". Decibel magazine. Archived from the original on 18 January 2008 . Retrieved 13 January 2008. As mentioned above, this album has elements of all the previous Opeth albums. You will notice the BWP and Deliverance elements (Ghost Of Perdition and The Grand Conjuration). You will notice the Still Life and Damnation elements (Atonement, Hours of Wealth, Isolation Years). You will notice the My Arms, Your Hearse elements (The Baying Of The Hounds) and you will notice the Orchid and Morningrise elements (the amount of variations in some songs and Reverie/Harlequin Forest).

The Grand Conjuration' Video Posted Online". Blabbermouth.net. 2 September 2005 . Retrieved 2 June 2014. This album really disappointed me with The Grand Conjuration. The reason is the heavy use of keyboards. This could have been a very evil, atmospheric and heavy song if it wasn’t for the influence of that blasted instrument. Instead, it oozes cheesiness and sounds like warped church-music. Compare it to their earlier songs such as Advent and Demon of the Fall, where they take you for the ride of your life, and develop an excellent atmosphere using only traditional heavy metal instruments. The Grand Conjuration only conjures up regret that they don’t display their prior use of composition on this album. In my opinion, keyboarding really weakens the songs during many points. Although it does juice up the atmosphere of the soft songs such as Hours of Wealth, it should have been left out of the heavy songs.Ghost Reveries Special Edition". Archived from the original on 17 July 2010 . Retrieved 7 August 2010.

One good point for the album, but it’s a thing Opeth always does: They are always on the count. The chorus of The Grand Conjuration, and Beneath the Mire prove that. I was hoping for a step closer to (and beyond) Deliverance as that was easily their most metallic offering. True, Ghost Reveries has its moments where it can be said to be more metallic than most of their other albums, but there’s just too much Damnation in here for my taste, and way too much filler. I’m still looking for some Opeth-music I can bang my head to. This just didn’t do it for me, sorry. So there we have it, we have reached the end of our plight. Certainly not a flawless album, but a new direction that Opeth have taken, and not a bad direction at all. This album is definitely not 'boring' as I have seen many people label it, and many have claimed that it is not 'Opeth' at all. Yet it is, and just simply how Opeth have progressed. I would prefer them to progress in this manner than produce more and more clones of previous albums (although no doubt they would be fantastic too probably). I recommend this album to anyone who likes symphonic metal (even if the keyboards aren't that dominant), or to people who are trying to get used to harsh vocals, as they are not raw on this album like previous albums of the band and the vocals of other bands. Overall, an extremely solid album that deserves much more credit and less criticism than it has already received. Listy przebojów - Muzyka w INTERIA.PL - teledyski, koncerty, nowości płytowe, dobra muzyka, listy przebojów". Archived from the original on 8 October 2013 . Retrieved 8 August 2014. Ghost of Perdition: This song is a great starter for the album. It begins with a cleanly strummed guitar part and then roars into a very groovy, heavy and mean riff that is nicely complimented by Mikaels unearthly growl. As usual the riffing throughout the song is very intricate and precise, so that was no suprise. One thing that really caught me off my guard was Mikael introduces a new style of singing into the mix. Almost a talk or MAYBE you can call it a rap ( :nono: ) but whatever you'd call it, it sounds great. The mellow part of the song fits and is one of the more beautiful points in the entire album. Mikael sings some very high notes at this part and is very impressive. The song continues on as a fairly high energy piece right through to the end and is finished with Michael doing his vocal melody from the mellow part over some heavy riffage. Great tune. 9/10Perhaps the single musical aspect that most obviously shows the bipolarity of this band are the vocals. Åkerfeldt's death growls are deep, beast-like. And his clean voice is simply beautiful and friendly, most of the time. In both styles, he uses his voice to create different atmospheres. And to speak more about that, among other things, The Grand Conjuration deserves some special attention. The album only partly portrays a concept, not fully arranged in the poetic manner as previous releases such as "Still Life" and "My Arms, Your Hearse". "The Baying of the Hounds" is partially inspired by lyrics from the song "Diana" from Comus's album "First Utterance".

Opeth returned home in 2004 to start writing new material for its eighth album, and by the end of the year, they had finished writing it. [6] For the first time since Still Life, the songs for Ghost Reveries were written for the album before going into the studio. This gave Opeth three weeks to rehearse and perfect the recording in the studio. The band had to decide whether to record the album at Fascination Street Studios in Örebro, Sweden, or at Sonic Ranch. They eventually chose Fascination Street Studios, as it was closer to their homes. More importantly, the instrumentation is fantastic, Akerfeldt’s vocals a classic mix between clean singing and growls; neither of them have downhill after fifteen years. Martin Lopez’s versatile drumming never ceases to amaze as he works in excellent fills, rapid double bass, and engaging, original beats. The inclusion of ethnic drums in the album’s middle songs signifies just another influence in this incredibly diverse album. Ghost Reveries is teeming with great riffs, from the slow, soothing bass groove of Atonement, to the vicious, heavy assaults found during brief straight-up death metal portions of the longer songs, and The Grand Conjuration’s plain evil main riff. The keyboards add a new dimension to Opeth’s sound and provide more options for the band, notably that weird but catchy, enjoyable riff at the beginning of Beneath the Mire. The guitar solos are well-performed, technical, and impressive, though they tend to slide under the radar, not being the focal points of the songs. Mikael:“ Atonement has become a great live song over the years. We like to jam that one out, and it gives us a lot of freedom. The Grand Conjuration is one of my favourite Opeth songs to play. It’s so heavy and straightforward, and we don’t have many songs like that… and it’s really not a nu metal song, I promise you.” Mikael remains respectfully reticent on the subject, but it’s clear Martin wasn’t in the best physical or mental state when Ghost Reveries was being assembled.Swedish progressive death metal behemoth Opeth have a rich and varied history behind them at this point – many of their records could rightfully be considered their crowning acvhievement, for reasons unique to every album and to every listener that engages with the band’s music. And yet, finding one out of their twelve full-lengths we all agree upon for inclusion in the A Scene In Retrospect feature proved to be surprisingly easy a task. Apparently, their eighth album Ghost Reveries holds a special place in the hearts of our team and the Opeth fanbase alike; you can find what our Editor-in-Chief Landon and staff writers Jud, John, and Robert have to say about it. Enjoy! Speaking of mellotron, it is here in abundance. Beneath The Mire, Hours of Wealth...nah forget it, all the songs have mellotron floating all over the place, and it's used quite well. That brings up another point: Opeth is really in touch with their prog side here. Mellotron everywhere, keyboards as well, lots of variety in the songs, creativity in heaps and mounds, great harmonies and technically difficult music, everything a 70s classic like Selling England By The Pound or Red has this album has just as much of. I'd even go so far as to say it's more creative than some of Genesis's efforts, and definitely ELPs. King Crimson and Yes still beat it out though, which is why I love them too. Rauf, Raziq (15 September 2005). "Opeth – Ghost Reveries". Drowned in Sound . Retrieved 28 February 2021. [ permanent dead link]

Lee, Cosmo (13 September 2005). "Opeth – Ghost Reveries – Review". Stylus Magazine. Archived from the original on 4 August 2021 . Retrieved 1 March 2021. This, my friends, is probably the biggest injustice ever committed within the metal circles, as unjust as all the critics Metallica got after releasing the (great) Load album. I was just doing my own thing. I didn’t know where we were going, but I didn’t think it was a watershed moment, so to speak!” Mikael laughs. “The biggest thing to me was the inclusion of the keyboards, but beyond that I didn’t really think about what we were doing much at all.”Some copies of Ghost Reveries were mastered using HDCD. Although it is unmarked, playing the album in a CD player able to decode HDCD will give superior sound quality. The best concept to define Opeth, at least up until the release of Ghost Reveries (or even Watershed, though that could be stretching a bit), is bipolar music. There's no difficulty in seeing why. Anything that contains death metal will, of course, be brutal, but Opeth goes beyond this and gives beauty to their songs. Aggression and beauty here walk in parallel ways, occasionally crossing paths, joining their apparent contradictory faces in a new one. Then comes "Beneath The Mire", starting with quite possibly the funkiest segment Opeth could ever produce - it sounds more like Farmakon, to be honest, who are usually like a jazzier, if less melodious clone of Opeth anyway. Mellotrons and funk drums flow behind Peter's on-off guitar riffage for about two minutes, and we then get Mikael's best heavy vocal melody of the album. A recurring blast beat from Lopez gives the edge Mikael needs here, before going into the proggy guitar and emotive, clean vocals for a while - "you'd cling to your pleasant hope, in it's twisted fascination." After this, comes Per on piano while Mikael has a short, sweet solo reminiscent of the one he gives in Porcupine Tree's "Arriving Somewhere But Not Here". Mikael switches to acoustic for a moment before leading us into the maelstrom once more - a great death scream and some inventive drumming bring us to another catchy, melodious section with heavy guitars and clean vocals. Finally, the guitars rise and fall like a tide, leading into an ending rich with off-kilter time-signatures and Pink Floyd style guitar experimentation. Another excellent song that shows the band's mature exploration of progressive themes. This is the new studio album from the Swedish Prog/Death Metal band Opeth and quite possibly the best yet. Now this is surprising because most bands tend to become worse with later albums but with Opeth they only seem to get better and better. They may one day be recognized as underground metal legends.