1:
2:
3:
4:
5:
6:
7: Morningrise (tie)
7: Pale Communion (tie)
8: My Arms Your Hearse
9: In Cauda Venenum
10: Orchid
11: Sorceress
12: Heritage
Total score: 56
Morningrise highest score: 10 (
@KidInTheDark666)
Morningrise lowest score: 2 (
@JudasMyGuide)
Pale Communion highest score: 10 (
@MrKnickerbocker)
Pale Communion lowest score: 1 (
@KiDDo)
Our first and only tie of the game may come as a bit of a shock. At least around here, Pale Communion seems to be a more talked about and praised album compared to Morningrise, which is often lumped together with the debut album that scored significantly lower (Orchid scored 40 points which is quite a stark difference). I would have expected Morningrise to land close to Orchid, although I guess I'm also not surprised about any of the albums that it beat to land where it landed. It
is a significantly better album than both the debut and My Arms Your Hearse, but is it as good an album as Pale Communion? That seems like a stretch.
When giving it more thought, however, I think the ranking makes a bit of sense. Morningrise and Pale Communion both represent the best of what Opeth has to offer outside their classic era and sound. Everything remaining on the list comes from the 1999 - 2008 period that they are best known/recognized for. Pale Communion might be the best Newpeth album, but there's probably only so far up an average album ranking that a Newpeth album can go. Likewise, despite being the best of their early work, Morningrise is still a far cry from any of the classics.
With that being said, I would say Pale Communion is a significantly better album and in some ways feels more like a classic Opeth album than Morningrise despite the lack of growls. A lot of the songs have that classic Opeth riffing and dark vibe. The songwriting is way more focused than on any other Newpeth album and I feel like you could squint and place several of the songs on Ghost Reveries or Watershed. Personally, I ranked the album higher than both Watershed and Deliverance. I think it has less filler than Deliverance even if it never quite reaches that album's peaks. Similar situation with Watershed. Both albums kinda feel like a hodgepodge to me, but Pale Communion is
slightly more focused. It also feels like a more genuine representation of where the band is at the time (Watershed in a lot of ways is the Metal version of In Cauda Venenum where the band is just going with the motions). At the same time, I strongly believe that Opeth is somewhat incomplete without that metal element, so I can see why these two albums score higher almost by default (there is also a pretty big gap in points before the next entry).
Where Pale Communion feels like an underperformance, Morningrise feels more like an overperformance. Like I said before, I expected the first three albums to score a little closer together. I actually figured that both Pale Communion and ICV would do a bit better, maybe even Sorceress. There's still a cult following to the early Opeth albums and quite a few lists placed Morningrise in the top five, which just wasn't the case for most of the Newpeth albums. With the exception of a few outlier scores, very few lists placed Morningrise close to the bottom. I really like Morningrise and the album has grown on me significantly over the years, but I still think it only reaches so many heights compared to the amount of meandering riffing (of which the infamous Black Rose Immortal is probably most guilty of). Still, there are a lot of really unique moments and I would have loved to hear what Opeth circa 2003 would do with something like Advent.
Overall this result is probably the first major shock of the game. Not sure anybody would really associate these two albums even in terms of quality levels, but here we are!
