Opeth – Opeth in Live Concert at The Royal Albert Hall
Release Date: 2010Sep21 (US)
Label: Roadrunner Records
Rating: 5/5
This review starts with a pair of telling quotes. The first comes from a friend who repeatedly said while listening: “I can’t believe this is live; it sounds too good!”. And indeed it does. Opeth has become an institution in progressive music, and this concert was a critical rite of passage in their twenty year existence. Not only is it audibly impressive, the career-spanning, boner-inducing setlist easily rivals that of The Roundhouse Tapes. It also functions as a historical landmark because, as frontman Mikael Åkerfeldt put it: “We are actually bringing death metal into the halls of fine culture”, and there is no band better equipped to accomplish this feat.
I arrived late to the Opeth game, only discovering Ghost Reveries for myself back in 2005. Since then, their back catalogue has worked its way into my regular rotations, particularly the landmark Blackwater Park. That album appears here in its entirety, without a break or banter between songs. This is not the case for the rest of the music here, which feature Mikael’s sly and dry Swedish wit, as he regales the audience with stories of recording with Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree) and post-concert picture-taking plans, paying homage to his heroes in Deep Purple and Camel, who also played The Royal Albert Hall. Even the DVD cover is a near-exact replica of Deep Purple‘s!
While it may be argued that Opeth requires immersion in their respective opera, I maintain that chronologically performing selected works from each album accomplishes the task they created for themselves. To compare anything other than Blackwater Park is hardly fair, and again, its reproduction is as faithful as one can hope for during concert performance. There isn’t a dud here, and as a matter of fact, Opeth in Live Concert at The Royal Albert Hall is one of the finest live documents I have ever heard.
Note: We were only serviced with the music, not the full 2DVD/3CD set, so I cannot write anything about the video.
FCC OK during songs, but NOT in the between-song banter… so be mindful of the dialogue if broadcasting!
Set 1
Disc I
01. The Leper Affinity
02. Bleak
03. Harvest
04. The Drapery Falls
05. Dirge For November
06. The Funeral Portrait
07. Patterns In The Ivy
08. Blackwater Park
Set 2
Disc II
01. Forest Of October
02. Advent
03. April Ethereal
04. The Moor
Disc III
01. Wreath
02. Hope Leaves
03. Harlequin Forest
04. The Lotus Eater
