Biography from Last.fm
Opeth is a progressive metal band from Sweden that is influenced by many diverse musical styles ranging from jazz, 1970s progressive rock, death metal, and blues. Their recent releases have deviated from their traditional death metal influenced style, with more emphasis on progressive elements. Vocalist Mikael Åkerfeldt is also noted for utilizing both clean singing and death growls, often in the same track. Due to their unique blend of melodic and progressive elements Read more on Last.fm
By now you’ve read the one list that really matters – the Thrash Hits Top 10 Albums of 2014 – but now we’re giving you the opportunity to delve a little deeper into the minds that created it. Here are the unedited, unspoiled and unsullied opinions that we crunched together to distill our Top 10. We asked our contributors to tell us what their personal Top 10 records of the last 12 months were, and to justify their top choice to us.
Soen
Tellurian
Spinefarm Records
03 November 2014
The old adage about difficult second albums usually applies to bands whose debuts were heaped with a barrage of saccharine praise. Soen, a supergroup made up of members of Willowtree and Opeth, are now are in a similarly difficult juncture but for opposite reasons. Their debut, Cognitive, was universally criticised for its borrowings from Tool, from its sleek, subversive delivery and socio-enviro-eco-political parables, right on through to its Lateralus-like artwork.
In two weeks time, we will be at Download Festival 2014. Still the single biggest weekend in the UK rock calendar, once again around about 100,000 rock fans will descend upon Donington Park for three days of music, drinking, debauchery, and casual sexism. To get us in the mood for the first three of those things (let’s hope there’s a lot less of the fourth this year, right guys?), the next two Sunday Slaylists are all about the line-up to this year’s festival.
This week: The big guns. The heavy hitters. The bands you know.
Roadburn Festival describe themselves as “Europe’s leading underground festival for psychedelic, avant-garde, doom or any other variation of leftfield sonic pleasures that push the boundaries of music.” It’s that offering that brought Rob McAuslan over the sea and back to the festival for his third consecutive visit – this year featuring line-up choices and a day of curation from one Mikael Åkerfeldt.
Six Things We Learned At Roadburn 2014:
Life is funny. Music is fun. Life is serious. Music is serious. As in life, it is in music. There are moments that are hilarious and others that are much less so. Either way, they stick in your mind. Whether you revel in having fun or in poking fun, you will have had a Favourite Moment in 2013 and that’s what this list is. Some of them are utter abominations of class and style but that’s why you’re on this pitiful excuse of a website. Hooray.
Another day, another festival announcement…today it’s Download Festival, who’ve confirmed a further six names for Donington this year. The five entirely fresh names are Killswitch Engage, Black Veil Brides, NOFX, Opeth, and Nightwish, with “official” confirmation also coming through on Shinedown, who had previously leaked their presence on the bill a few weeks back.
The votes are in, the arguments have been settled, and the fights concluded without too much bloodshed – The Thrash Hits Top 20 Albums of 2011 list is here. We polled all of our writers, photographers, and contributors as to what their favourite records of the year have been, and through a series of complex mathematical formulae, we’ve calculated the 20 albums that have come out on top.
You’ve got to hand it to Mikael Åkerfeldt. Moving away from the heavier side of Opeth’s music must have taken some serious balls, especially when that’s what won them their initial fanbase. We thought we’d head down to Brixton and get our prog fix.
We let Hugh Platt near Photoshop, and yet we still gave him the go ahead to mouth off about album art? Bloody hell, we’re suckers for punishment sometimes…
It’s long been feared that one of the side-effects of the proliferation of digital music over physical formats would be that album art gradually becomes a thing of the past. After all, who cares about album art when it exists only as a tiny 200 pixel by 200 pixel image on an iPod Touch? Well, those of us old enough to be nostalgic about such things as pouring over a record’s liner notes are starting to see our worst nightmares come to pass – because 2011 has truly seen some of the worst excuses for album art ever to get the green light from a record label’s promotions department.
Opeth
Heritage
Roadrunner Records
19 September 2011
by Amit Sharma
If there was ever a band the saying ‘slow and steady wins the race’ could apply to, that band would be Opeth. The Swedish progressive metal titans have had a very natural growth over the course of their 21 years and by doing so have established one of the most loyal fanbases around.
With the upcoming release of their tenth studio album Heritage, Mikael Åkerfeldt will be testing this fanbase more than ever before – moving away from the heavier end of metal and into more 70’s prog territory. You’ve probably heard that this record will feature no scream vocals but if you think you already own this album (in the form of Damnation) think again…