MrKnickerbocker
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Heritage starts off nicely with a somber, beautiful piano track. It never goes anywhere but I appreciate the moody darkness of it. Still, gets a vote.
The Devil’s Orchard is a pretty great song. It manages to blend old Opeth’s evil into the NuPeth and remains one of the better examples of it to this day. Even better live.
I Feel The Dark has a great start, and great first two minutes or so, reminiscent of Damnation. After that, it goes totally upside down and manages to ruin what could have been a good song.
Slither is a cool tribute with nice parts, but merely an average song. Opeth trying to sound like a different band doesn’t work.
Nepenthe is terrible. It has some vibe, but zero flow, zero interesting vocal sections, zero hooks. It’s a bunch of quiet, jazzy jam sections thrown together with “loud” parts that aren’t good. Contender for their worst song.
Haxprocess absolutely sucks, too. Awkward vocals, barely audible acoustic guitar plucks with children talking sound fx, and blatantly bad transitions. Fading out and fading in with a different section multiple times per song means you never wrote a song, you wrote pieces. Another contender for worst song.
And Famine makes three! Three of the most poorly composed songs in the entire discography in a row! The intro makes no sense. The piano transition makes no sense. The vocals are yearning, I guess, but still awkward. The guitar transition is fucking horrible. A cool riff comes in that sounds like old Opeth, but like old Opeth trapped in a cage, before the return of Latin percussion and more awkward vocals. A cool riff comes in after a terrible drum fill, covered up by some weird flute. It’s probably the best riff on the whole album, but it’s caught in a fucking terrible song. Oh look, it’s a tacked-on, pointless piano outro with sound FX!
Lines In My Hand is fine. I’ll give it a pass because it’s too short to offend me much.
Folklore is long-winded, but it’s really quite good. The intro is a bit unnecessary but the Damnation-style groove that follows is fantastic. There’s still plenty of awkward vocal lines here, but the song comes together as a whole despite constantly sounding like it might fall off the rails. The last two minutes are easily the best piece of music on this whole record and point directly towards the more driving, melodic nature that would emerge on the following album.
Marrow is another great bookend, but it’s not gonna stay in the game so might as well cut it now.
Pyre is solid, but the lyrics are a bit lame. At least it feels like a song instead of a riff tape. This should have been on the album instead of a handful of others, but still isn’t strong enough to move on.
Face in the Snow is tunefully melancholic and better than most of this album. If Opeth is gonna be this light, I far prefer this to what we got on the proper record.
Throat of Winter is just awkward all around.
I understand that people defend the vibe of this album over the individual songs, but I personally despise that in an album. The best Opeth works because the atmosphere enhances the overall composition. This record is atmosphere for the sake of atmosphere. It may be sonically challenging the listener, it might be an adventurous experiment, but neither of those change the fact that the songs simply are not good.
The Devil’s Orchard is a pretty great song. It manages to blend old Opeth’s evil into the NuPeth and remains one of the better examples of it to this day. Even better live.
I Feel The Dark has a great start, and great first two minutes or so, reminiscent of Damnation. After that, it goes totally upside down and manages to ruin what could have been a good song.
Slither is a cool tribute with nice parts, but merely an average song. Opeth trying to sound like a different band doesn’t work.
Nepenthe is terrible. It has some vibe, but zero flow, zero interesting vocal sections, zero hooks. It’s a bunch of quiet, jazzy jam sections thrown together with “loud” parts that aren’t good. Contender for their worst song.
Haxprocess absolutely sucks, too. Awkward vocals, barely audible acoustic guitar plucks with children talking sound fx, and blatantly bad transitions. Fading out and fading in with a different section multiple times per song means you never wrote a song, you wrote pieces. Another contender for worst song.
And Famine makes three! Three of the most poorly composed songs in the entire discography in a row! The intro makes no sense. The piano transition makes no sense. The vocals are yearning, I guess, but still awkward. The guitar transition is fucking horrible. A cool riff comes in that sounds like old Opeth, but like old Opeth trapped in a cage, before the return of Latin percussion and more awkward vocals. A cool riff comes in after a terrible drum fill, covered up by some weird flute. It’s probably the best riff on the whole album, but it’s caught in a fucking terrible song. Oh look, it’s a tacked-on, pointless piano outro with sound FX!
Lines In My Hand is fine. I’ll give it a pass because it’s too short to offend me much.
Folklore is long-winded, but it’s really quite good. The intro is a bit unnecessary but the Damnation-style groove that follows is fantastic. There’s still plenty of awkward vocal lines here, but the song comes together as a whole despite constantly sounding like it might fall off the rails. The last two minutes are easily the best piece of music on this whole record and point directly towards the more driving, melodic nature that would emerge on the following album.
Marrow is another great bookend, but it’s not gonna stay in the game so might as well cut it now.
Pyre is solid, but the lyrics are a bit lame. At least it feels like a song instead of a riff tape. This should have been on the album instead of a handful of others, but still isn’t strong enough to move on.
Face in the Snow is tunefully melancholic and better than most of this album. If Opeth is gonna be this light, I far prefer this to what we got on the proper record.
Throat of Winter is just awkward all around.
I understand that people defend the vibe of this album over the individual songs, but I personally despise that in an album. The best Opeth works because the atmosphere enhances the overall composition. This record is atmosphere for the sake of atmosphere. It may be sonically challenging the listener, it might be an adventurous experiment, but neither of those change the fact that the songs simply are not good.
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