Ελληνικά
Last Updated on 06:37 PM by Nikos Nakos
Genre: Progressive
Country: Sweden
Label: Moderbolaget/Reigning Phoenix
Year: 2024
You start your journey with death metal, you progress with rapid steps influencing everyone and you cross the legacy of 70s prog rock. You reach the last days of 2024, then you stop, take a breath and decide to combine all your eras, without ever forgetting to add new touches. You are Opeth, you wrote ‘The Last Will and Testament’, a fucking masterpiece, which every heavy metal lover needs. The first element that catches your attention is the audacity of the experienced Swedes, even from the album cover. Dark, gloomy, haunted like an old photo in your grandparents’ attic. The absence of song titles creates tension feeling that you are entering uncharted territory, far from the era of the omnipresence of easy entertainment, commercial hits and the predictability of AI. Opeth dare to write a complex musical theater full of contrasts, difficult but addictive, grotesque but charming, cursed and at the same time liberating. The curtain falls abruptly, the first steps are heard on the wooden floor and the narrative begins with shocking intensity to surprise us. In the first chapter, the band’s strategy is evident: They want to crush any resistance from the beginning with the use of dizzying speed, alternations of clean and dirty vocals, constant changes of rhythm and cleverly placed atmospheric and orchestral passages. In the storytelling, the legendary patriarch of prog rock Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull) plays a pivotal role, while Joey Tempest (Europe) makes a guest appearance, each adding their own intellect to Opeth’s pitch-black canvas. Very quickly the listener understands that he is faced with an impenetrable musical wall, excessively dense, impenetrable and worked out in the smallest detail. Already by the third part of the testament, you feel trapped in the musical vision of the Swedes, who guide you perfectly in their sonic labyrinth, only allowing small breaths for you to endure the whole play until the end. While you think that the acoustic point or the recitation, the calm piece with oriental melodies or the passage that has something of Pink Floyd will be your salvation, on the contrary, it works insidiously like a small dose of poison that captivates you even more in the web. Opeth do not just write complex music, they offer it in a way that demands your full attention. Not because you will not understand it if you do not devote yourself to it, but because the more you listen, the more you enjoy it, deciphering all its dark points. Every minute that passes in the 4th chapter, you understand that you are entering deeper and deeper into their fascinating world and the highly theatrical performance of Mikel Åkerfeldt, who plays multiple roles throughout the story, has you spellbound. It’s too late to turn back, you now have a place among the dysfunctional family of the central story and you patiently count skeletons in the closet. The plot is properly structured to perfectly match the music, staged according to the mood of each song. At the end of the story, you put on your bow tie, fasten your suit, put on your half-tall hat and run away from the cursed house. Until you press play again. Opeth’s performance is shocking, starting with the guitars that literally paint. Their role is central, they color the compositions at every turn of the drama. Deeply studied to play with the listener’s senses, they are perfectly complemented by Ian Anderson’s immortal flute, the playful Mellotron and Hammond parts and all the orchestral parts in general, which work in favor of the variety of musical & layering of the composition. The new drummer, Waltteri Vayrynen, who comes from Paradise Lost, feels like he was there all along, a well-tuned part of the machine. I left Akefeldt for last, who enlisted every trick in his quiver to record a top performance – an advertisement in all directions of what extreme metal can express. Bless us all, as we become witnesses of a highly skilled mixture of different styles and rock and metal eras, blending perfectly into a compact work of art. Opeth’s new album is proof that Metal musix has reached the point after half a century of existence, of being able to offer difficult, anti-tourist masterpieces that can move listeners from different backgrounds, possibly even outside of metal. Whether it’s the metal version of ‘Thick as a Brick’ or the horror prog metal epic that King Diamond never wrote, The Last Will and Testament’ is one of those masterpieces. The first truly massive metal album of the decade.
