It's like they said, 'hey, let's make our songs listenable instead of a wall of rampaging onslaught!'

Also pretty cool, apparently they recorded this to tape.

Yeah, i find it to be a very big step up from the unbearable wall of technical prowess(and little else) that their earlier records amount to.

This is a fine track.

I also think the recto sounds fucking awesome here.

Dude, Entity is totally the shit.. I like old Origin too (for it's unbearable facefuckery) but this is definitely a more mature, crafty band at work on this new one.

I liked the little trem-picked in time with the kick thing at the end.

I would also only be slightly surprised if the "we did this to tape" thing became sort of a status symbol, the implication of course being "we did this for real". Plenty of good stuff hit tape in the past 10 years or still does, even heavy bands sometimes, but given the chops and competitive thing in metal and the general backlash against '00s-era overproduction... More than the actual reality of it (I've copied tape to the computer and edited in PT LE, fuck yeah!, years ago, doing metal, mixing down on a Mackie and guitar gear for outboard or ITB with shitty plugins or hybrid both sync'd with a MOTU MIDI box) it implies competence and confidence when people assume your producer... probably has more chops at their gig than you do at yours.

Finest example of sonic futurism.

This was released when?

Think about it.

Brilliant work.

Man, Longstreth is such a bossnigga drummer.. Incredible shit, dude beats the fuck out of the skins and you can hear how tight the tom work is even without triggers at these retarded BPMs.

Oh, fo sho. Trent was/is a fucking techwizard. Sort of a precursor to the insane shit coming up on The Fragile.

Nothing can stop me now, cause I don't care anymore.

Again. I haven't heard a new album this good in a very fucking long time. Since "The Blackening," I think.

I have a hard time listening to it in a way, the riffs and drumming are totally there but seeing as Sauron is my favorite vocalist it's hard for me to enjoy it as much as I know I could.

Sauron? Wasn't he in Lord of the Rings or someshit?

Spinning this now. Not listened to it in a loooong time.
I might have to skip closer though as I must have head that song in clubs about a million times.

I never got along too well with that record. I always liked everything he did before and after far better.

It's not on my list of favorites of his songwriting-wise; it's right above With Teeth there I think but it is a benchmark production, IMO. I like it more for what it is and how it sounds than what's actually on it.

Right now, I'm rocking this, which sounds like it just stepped out of 1974, and... as much as I liked Martin Lopez, I think his shoes have been... Adequately filled. Production on this is total '70s hi-fi. REALLY dynamic. And there is not enough vibraphone in rock-and-roll, dammit!



So want on vinyl.

Also listening to this. I think as far as cool factor goes, this is the best Opeth record to date. They've been heading this way since Blackwater Park, so in a way it's exactly what I expected when Mikael said there'd be no growls on this album. In another way, it's not at all what I expected from a badass prog death band.


Production-wise, it sounds good. Really good. Everything is a bit dirty sounding... not in a distorted way, in that everything needs a bath. Like Eric said, 1970's hi-fi.

I think a big part of what contributes to that sound is that there really isn't a lot of top end on anything. It seems pretty concentrated in the mids and lows; even the cymbals, to some extent. There isn't that 10-12k pop vocal presence, drums are really midrangey, lots of bottom end, lots of really interesting details low down in the mix; I'm actually surprised to hear such a wide dynamic range. Like, I expected this, but not quite to that extent. This is really cool sounding. There's a lot of really cool details going down here.

It's pretty much the antithesis of anything modern. It's pretty sweet; they actually did manage to capture a sound that sounds like it just stepped out of the '70s- more so I think than Gov't Mule even, with the rolled-off top end and middy drums.

It definitely has that 70s sound. Especially some of the cleaner guitar tones just scream 70's gear recorded with modern equipment.


At the end of Haxprocess... am I hearing fucking reverb on the BASS? That is something I've never heard before, and it sounds fucking amazing.

Hm, I suppose I should be listening to that new Opeth.

Yep. Sounds very old-school jazz there.

Some Type O stuff I remember having 'verby bass in the clean sections, and you've probably heard that. It's not a common sound for sure but it does show up on things occasionally.