Listened to both songs and...liked them alot!
I´m very new to Opeth, I tried them through the years with songs (looks like I´ll never get into their early material)
and albums (Watershed and Pale Communion) but they never "clicked" with me.
Maybe I should start my journey into Opeth?
Better late than never I guess.
Yes!
Anyway, although there are people who prefer Newpeth and I think that's a valid reaction, one should primarily understand why the band had their fandom in the first place, so I'd say - try to give Oldpeth a chance or two.
You being a prog boomer (which I also was back then and I still have the residual traces within me
) - just look at your avatar - I'd recommend the route me and wifey went - I bought
Ghost Reveries and played it on repeat in car ... at about 6th or 7th listen it just
clicked and we went through a voracious journey through all their albums.
Reveries do possess a lot of the autumnal atmosphere Opeth are famous for and are possibly the best balanced ratio of death metal* and prog, so it feels like a good "serious" starting point - and it's the logical progression backwards from Watershed.
Then I'd go with the mainstream popular choice
Blackwater Park, it's the first album with Wilson and it shows - stuff like Wreath or
Drapery Falls has a lot of crossover appeal, IMHO and even the title track, despite containing only growls, has had a lot of mainstream success, having bad-ass riffs, some really nice subdued sections and massively epic escalation of mood towards the end of the track
and the album.
BTW -
Jer, with all his hatred of growls actually voted for this album over Judas Priest in the Greatest Metal Album cup (immense respect from me, bro)
After that, I'd say go easy on your prog boomery ears and follow that with
Damnation - a subdued, quieter mostly purely prog album that is still harmonically and atmospherically 100% Oldpeth.
Then you're pretty much informed, as far as Oldpeth go.
Don't listen to folks telling you or implying to go with
Still Life - that album is excellent and one of their best (and I absolutely get the people who say it's their best overall), but it's more of a "fan choice" and does tend to feel a bit abrasive at first - it was the last album before Steven Wilson started to produce and the mastering is a tad brickwalled and the atmosphere is a bit too chaotic and raw aggressive (primarily thanks to the sound/production) - you should definitely try it and try to love it, but maybe give it time. That said,
Moonlapse Vertigo has been my personal no. 1 Opeth song for quite some time now and it is possibly the most classic-prog influenced song of the album. The Moor is also a favourite.
Same caveat I'd give about
Deliverance - I listened to it very early and loved it and still do,
the title track is incredibly famous and was one of the first Opeth tracks I listened to on repeat (after Drapery Falls off BWP) and I still sometimes play the outro on its own when I need to lift up my mood, but people here tend to dislike the rest of the album, saying it's way too pushing it to the metal side of things and that it sounds strained and like Mikael was already outgrowing metal. I don't agree with that, but that's a majority opinion around here, so I'd say leave that album for later. That said,
A Fair Judgement is an example of 100% Oldpeth track without growls and some other stuff here (like By the Pain I See in Others) is pretty damn unique.
Of course you can just go with the new album, especially if you like the songs so far and go backwards or something. Of the Newpeth albums,
Heritage is very jazzy and classic prog influenced (I have heard a lot of Canterbury scene and particularly Camel in Newpeth in general, but especially here), with a lot of subdued, quiet sections and almost fusion-like interludes,
Pale Communion you already know,
Sorceress is a lot of hard rock/60s rock influence (almost kinda psychedelic/stoner atmosphere sometimes), sun etc. and
In Gouda, Venison is rather autumnal and doomy, kinda like latter-early-era Sabbath (think
Sabbath Bloody Sabbath or
Sabotage - Mikael really loves those albums and I think it probably shows here the most, maybe with a smidgeon of something gothic in there).
Anyway, whichever way you go, I hope you'll like it!
* just a note - more and more I wonder if Opeth ever really were death metal, even on the first albums. The guitar riffs and the guitar sound just don't sound DM to me at all - the debut, for example, is a lot of Celtic-influenced Maidenish jigs combined with black metalish appeal to atmosphere and kinda black metal-influenced vocals as well ... and even further on, the guitars started doing, like ... "deathened groove"? Dunno, but Mikael was always Iommi-influenced most of all, which makes him closer to prog, doom, gothic, hard rock even then death - the only truly DM thing are the growls.
