Opeth has become one of my favorite bands. They have a new album coming in June, and they're coming to town for a concert with my other favorite band Dream Theater. I'm really excited about that. And today they released their brand new video for their first single, Porcelain Heart.

And the gist of the video? A castle. A threesome. Kissing Goth chicks. Murder. And four Swedish guys and an Uruguayan.

OK, it's actually less trashy than that.


Anyway, it's 1am. I just finished some work, and I need downtime. Especially after some previous uptime, so to speak. naiad8 knows what I mean.

OH YEAH!

Two of my favorite bands, Dream Theater and Opeth are touring together in a festival-like bill called "Progressive Nation" next year in April/May.  They'll be bringing two other bands, 3 (yes, that's their name) and Between the Buried and Me.  I haven't heard 3 yet, but it's supposed to be more mellow, old school kind of progressive rock.  On the other hand, as the name implies, Between the Buried and Me is a death metal/hardcore/alternative beast that switch between super aggressive and super mellow.  On paper they should sound like Opeth, but after a few songs it's not happening for me.  It seems that the transitions between the aggressive and mellow are too abrupt.  I also don't like growling vocals that much but I like it in Opeth because, as some dude on some board summed it up, the growling in Opeth sounds like "Satan with a cold", whereas the growling in Between the Buried and Me just sounds like an annoying angry teenager.  I'd take Satan over a whiny teenager any day.

Of course, the festival has yet to announce any dates yet, so they might give me the shaft and avoid the Bay Area altogether.  On the other hand, the previous two Gigantours (one with Dream Theater and the other with Opeth) have made it to the Bay Area, so my hopes are high.  Perhaps with something of this caliber and size they'll get the Concord Pavillion which would be an excellent place for us because it's only 30 minutes from my inlaw's house (aka babysitting).

I discovered Opeth about six months ago and they've become one of my favorite bands.  I finally got their live DVD Lamentations and I've been watching it over and over again at work.  The DVD contains a pretty good breakdown of their style, although perhaps a tad heavy on the Damnation album, which is OK by me since that's some of the best psychedelic/progressive/70's rock that was never written in the 70's.  The rest is their usual amazingly complex schizophrenic progressive/death metal interwoven with mellow acoustic folk-ish rock, with only 5 songs taking up an hour.  It's probably not everybody's cup of tea since half the time the singer Mikael Akerfeldt sings in a low demon-like growl and the other half of the time in a beautiful and fragile soft voice, all in the same song.  I'm not typically a fan of cookie-monster death growls (it doesn't bother me, but it's like meh to me), but for some reason in Opeth it fits in this music because of the extreme changes in mood.  I'm also very impressed that he can do the two voices extremely well and can switch between them without much difficulty. 

The whole DVD has already been ripped onto YouTube, so if you search for "opeth lamentations" you can probably much watch the whole thing.  My favorite track on it is actually Deliverance, but unfortunately it got split into two parts on YouTube.  Other than that, Closure, The Drapery Falls, and Windowpane are great songs too.

http://www.opeth.com