Opeth @ The Palladium

September 19th, 2011.  Opeth's 10th record in not a metal record.  No death vocals.  No detuned, wildly overdriven guitars.  Mikael Akerfeldt has moved on and has been quite frank about it in recent interviews.  Still, there were many disappointed fans at Monday night's show which kicked off the world tour for Heritage.  I was not one of them.

Opeth's change of pace comes at a great time in my life, so perhaps I am just more open to it at this particular juncture.  The Heritage album speaks on its own - its blend of 1970's prog, hard rock, and fusion elements combined with Akerfeldt's caliber of songwriting is a welcome addition to my collection any day.  This turn in Opeth's sound also allowed them to rethink their live performance - they opted to fill the set with oddball songs and "obscure" b-sides, which never had their place when Opeth had to fill our ears with metal and could only select maybe 10 or so songs due to song duration and set time.

Predictable opener The Devil's Orchard was followed by its successor on the record, I Feel The Dark, and then by the classic Face Of Melinda.  But that's where predictability ended, and because of what came afterward I felt very lucky to be seeing the first show of the tour.  From Watershed came Porcelain Heart, which even though was a single has never before been played live.  They followed this with another new track, Nepenthe, before derailing us on an acoustic foray.  "This is going to get strange...", Mikael warned as he tuned up his acoustic.  What came next was a fantastic first live performance of Throat Of Winter (originally recorded for the God Of War 2 soundtrack and recently released on 7" vinyl), followed by a tripped-out rendition of Credence which featured light synthesizer accompaniment, and another first-time performance of a formerly rare Patterns In The Ivy II.  The acoustics were taken offstage and the crowd responded in anticipation and need for a few heavy cuts; "Deliverance" was repeatedly screamed from somewhere far off behind me...boy was that guy disappointed when the next song was introduced as a Rainbow ripoff and tribute to Ronnie James Dio - Slither, a new shorter song certainly stepped up the energy a notch, but just wasn't enough to satisfy the crowd's craving for progressive death metal.  The set was rounded off with an extra lengthy version of A Fair Judgment with an ultra slow doom-laden ending, and Hex Omega.

The set choices really reflect a deliberate shift, and opened up the possibilities for Opeth to play some really interesting songs that never found their way into live performances on past tours.  Further, all of the set's tracks really fit together and create a sense of cohesion between their new sound found on Heritage and their previous work.  Really breaking tradition was the new song Folklore as an encore in place of the tried-and-true Demon Of The Fall.  Maybe I'm the only one, but I had become bored of always hearing Demon as the standard Opeth encore time and time again.  While many others walked way grumbling and moaning, I found myself filled with a refreshing energy and happily soaking in the sounds of new Opeth.  Like the new record, the live performance contained not a single death growl...indeed we're at a crossroad and to make room for the new, some older things, though missed, must be discarded.

Listen to the entirety of Heritage on NPR Music here.

Opeth @ The Palladium Sept 19, 2011 (Photos by Dan Wyatt)