Opeth - Deliverance

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Free Music Notes for Deliverance

Free Music Review: Since this was a HUGE review before, it's now song-by-song.
Hit: 5 Stars

"Deliverance" - Starting off with melodic thrashes of heaviness and growling, the song quickly breaks in a wonderful transition into one of the most haunting and unbelievable experiences you'll ever hear in music, as acoustic guitars and leads drift up from the fading murk, and then Mikael begins singing. "Walk with me...you'll never leave...wait to see...your spirit free..." Then there is a quick burst of heaviness, and it breaks back into the beautiful gloom: "Tell me how...your heart's in need...as I drown...you in the sea." And then it returns to the heaviness. There are so many sections of alternating beauty and alien evil throughout this song, it is as good as Opeth gets. The lyrics seem to tell the tale of a man who finds out that his lover is pregnant ("Received no warning/ From nothing to a lifecode") and ends up drowning her...and soon it begins to dawn on him that he will not escape his deliverance: "Deliverance...thrown back at me...deliverance...laughing at me." Finally, it's almost 14 minutes long, with the last four minutes or so of amazing rounds of heavy beats with an amazing flourish. This gets repeated about four times...a fantastic, powerful outro to a fantastic, powerful song.

"A Fair Judgment" starts off with a slow, melancholic piano intro, leading into a similarly-paced round of acoustic and electric guitar harmonies, with Mikael's haunting singing. There are no death metal growls here; and while there are sections of great, sweeping heavier guitars at times, this song is far from heavy in all. Great drumming from Martin Lopez, I might add. About four minutes into the song, after a faded heavy section, is a great classical-sounding guitar, with a sort of fuzzy sound that gives an Autumnal feel, before resuming with more of the slow-paced harmonies and vocals, which continue for a few more minutes until we have a vocal solo over piano from Mikael, repeating the opening lines: "Losing sleep...in too deep...fading sun...what have I done...come so close...to what I need most...nothing left..." and then silence as he breathes: "Here...," and then final, powerful, bleak metal riffs come in, fading slowly out.

"For Absent Friend" is the shortest track on this album (e.g. the only one under 10 minutes!), clocking in at a brief 2:17, but it is so perfectly placed, a nice little instrumental breather from the uber-heaviness and emotions of the other songs. The little guitar leads over the carefully acoustic pickings are simply marvelous. And then...

...THE BEAST RUMBLES OUT FROM HELL! The next song, "Master's Apprentices," is arguably the heaviest track on this entire album. Featuring a pounding rhythm for the majority of the song, the guitars hammer down like a violent flurry of thunder and lightning, with frightening growls from Mikael. In fact, although the jagged riffs are separated at times by brief but heavy melodies, the really beautiful stuff in this song doesn't start until over halfway into it, when Mikael's singing voice shines through like light at the end of a deep, long-forgotten tunnel, but this is quickly buried again by the death metal growls...there is a building melody, however - a brief solo that echoes out in a spacey manner - and the heaviness returns, building...and Mikael's singing returns, and - the heaviness just STOPS, and an unearthly transition into acoustic guitar strumming and more singing begins, carrying the listener into a blissful purgatory of swirling melancholy. There is just nothing else that matches this transition, in any song, anywhere. And in this peaceful (but sad) time, the vocals ring in harmonized, angelic tones, sucking the listener into an almost siren-like manner until - "PLUNGING INTO THE DEEPEST VOID DEPARTED SHELL LEFT DRAINED BEHIND!" the death vocals and eaviness return with a shebang, and quickly slay the light and beauty of just a moment before, and the song goes out in a beautiful, fading outro of mildly distorted guitars and solid percussions. Ten and a half minutes of unrivaled progressive rock.

"By the Pain I See in Others" starts off with a blurry sound, almost like something visible just beneath an icy pond. This something is an obviously fast-paced and heavy rhythm, and it immediately smashes up through that ice like a giant fist and gallops away, until a sudden transition to acoustic folk guitars and some ambient sounds blur in, with that same icy image as death metal vocals growl from beneath. Then the song gets heavy again, continuing the growls, but quickly switches to a "Fair Judgment" kind of sweeping, melodic, but heavy guitars and a few terrific solos. This whole cycle repeats again, and then fades into a synthesized sound that comes straight from a theme park or circus, and the vocals come in with such despair. Icy keyboards flow in slowly over this, until it all stops, and a wall of heavy guitars and acoustic folk come in, before switching over to full heaviness and melody. There are more of these eclectic - yet brilliant - transitions between heaviness and folk, and it is just best that you hear it for yourself. And be sure to listen to what follows as a hidden track at around 12:00 into the song...it is something else entirely, and a great end to a great album.

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