[Album] Opeth - Watershed

Watershed is Opeth's ninth album and was released in 2008, bringing another amazing progressive death metal album to the world. At first this album was hard to get into for me, but I soon learned that was just indicator of how deep and good the music was for me.

Like many albums I listen to I'd usually only listen to maybe two or three tracks regularly. As I gave Watershed many listens I soon learned how good listening to an entire album can be, a habit I make sure I continue as I get new music. Watershed was around the time I made the transition from listening to a select few tracks by artists to a wider view where I listened to entire albums as one piece, and from there I never looked back.

The first track, Coil, is a soft acoustic piece featuring Mikael Åkerfeldt's soothing vocals as well as Opeth first, female vocals. These vocals were provided by Nathalie Lorichs. The meaning I gathered from this song was about some kind of relationship between a couple who had gone their separate ways. Their vocals play over a soothing composition of acoustic guitars. The intro to the song reminded me of a riff from Metallica's "The Call of Ktulu". After the guitars fade out we hear an ominous build up in the background that leads into...

Heir Apparent, the second song on the album. Right from the dissonant opening chord you know this going to be a song that rocks you. Heir Apparent is easily the heaviest track on the record, by far. This song is a heavy nine minutes of pure death metal mixed with eerie sounding acoustic interludes, as well as some downright wicked guitar solos played over some of the heaviest riffs I've ever heard. The song builds up to a climax that fades off into a two minute or so outro that ends with a creepy ringing sound, bringing us to our next song.

The third track, The Lotus Eater, opens with soft humming from the singer, which then blows up into a fast paced metal song with back and forth clean and growling vocals. This was the first song I really liked on this album. What really drew me were the catchy riffs as well as the vocals. The song soon goes into a raging frenzy and then cuts off into a mellow acoustic and keyboard interlude. This slowly builds up into an amazing keyboard solo, easily my favorite part in the song. The song goes on a little more and fades out to different groups of people talking with each other.

Burden, the fourth track, is a emotional song that bears no growling vocals, only Åkerfeldt's touching voice as well as the inspired music played by the band. This song is just brimming with emotion, building up into the song's two minute or so outro, which contains one of my favorite acoustic pieces of music. It begins as a beautiful acoustic track that slowly sounds more and more dissonant as the song reaches its end, where the ending guitar sounds almost nothing like it did when the outro began. Burden is a stellar song that everyone can enjoy, regardless of if they like metal or not.

The fifth track, Porcelain Heart, is another song without death metal vocals, but with a much heavier sound than Burden. It begins with heavy drum fill that leads into the songs driving riff, a piece made from a set of both heavy and full sounding chords. The song then alternates between it's mellow verses and then heavy riffs that connect them, eventually reaching it's eerie outro that slowly fades out. It's probably my least favorite or second least favorite track on the album, but it is still a very good song.

Track six, Hessian Peel, is the song that took me the longest to get into, but ended up being one of my favorite tracks on the album. It begins as soft acoustic song driven by heavy drums that eventually builds up into a heavy metal song filled with some of my favorite riffs on the album. The song itself illustrates a slow fade in from soft to heavy in the span of eleven and a half minutes, and it is not a time wasted. Hessian Peel is the biggest track on the album and can take a little bit to get into if you're like me, but it definitely is one of Opeth's finest works.

The Albums final track, Hex Omega, is another track without death metal vocals, and serves as a very nice outro to the album. It alternates between soft verses and heavy interludes kinda like Porcelain Heart. It is also one of my lesser favorites on the album, but it is a nice song in and of itself. It ends with a nice organ and guitar ringing out, bringing Watershed to a close.

Easily the most unifying feature of the record is just how eerie it all sounds. This is a dark album and Opeth's wicked music brings this feeling to life, by combining guitars, keyboards, and a wide variety of vocals. Watershed is definitely a good record to listen to if you want to get into Opeth, it has something for everyone, touching acoustic tracks as well as pure heavy death metal. It is easily one of my favorite albums of all time, and I recommend it to all of you.

And with that my first real blog post is done! I hope you all enjoyed it, stay tuned for my next update, where I will review the game Wet for the Xbox 360. Clocks and Maids~ <3