Live Gig Review: Opeth at The Albert Hall, Manchester

My history of Opeth gigs is not great.

Thinking back to when I was a dumbass kid I had a ticket to what would probably have been their Ghost Reveries tour but one of our mates didn't have a ticket and couldn't afford the tout prices, so we all ended up selling our tickets to the touts and going to the pub instead.

Some years later we went to see them on some kind of "prog nation" (?) gig with a bunch of other prog bands. Whilst we made it to this gig, sadly Mikael's health didn't and he explained he'd been ill which resulted in (a much appreciated but) very muted performance. My main memory of that gig was Dream Theater and my friend's comment, "I'm not sure if there are too many notes, or not enough time!".

So anyway, back to last week.

I've never been to a gig at The Albert Hall before and I have to say the acoustics in there we phenomenal. It's a huge chapel with loads of preserved original features. We ended up sat effectively behind the band which I was initially a bit upset about. I was convinced this was going to sound awful but my fears were misplaced.

Instead, the sound was perfect. Big, crisp, defined, and powerful. And what's more, I was sat only a few metres away from these legends watching from a really unique and interesting angle.

And Opeth absolutely smashed it.

I've been a bit cold on Opeth for a while now, not really enjoying their gentler, proggy, jazzy phase. Their previous 2 albums I found to be a bit impenetratable. The return of the death growls for their most recent album, Last Will and Testament, piqued my interest again and so I thought I'd give it a go.

Now, as it happens, I hadn't gelled with Last Will either. Not really sure why, but my experience of it was that it was a bit "flat" and, if I'm honest, proggy, jazzy, impenetrable - albeit with death growls again.

So I was absolutely overjoyed to hear them play an amazing selection from their career including tracks from as far back as 1996 (The Night and the Silent Water, Morningrise), through 2001's (incredible) Blakwater Park, 2002's Deliverance, 2005's Ghost Reveries, all the way through to today. And this was all inter-mixed with a bunch of their new material in what turned out to be an awesome set-list.

The band looked like they were having a lot of fun, and Mikael just seems really comfortable doing his thing, He's a funny man and can work a crowd with or without music.

As much as I loved the nostalgic tour of some old classics - The Leper Affinity in particular was exquisite - my main takeaway was that I actually quite like Last Will now, having heard half of it live, and I even enjoyed some of the stuff from their proggy, jazzy, impenetrable phase. Sorceress, in particular had never really moved me until this gig.

So, it turns out, music is a bit like bacteria - it just keeps multiplying. Not only do I now need to deep dive back through Opeth's catalogue just because it reminded me of how awesome they were, but I also need to revisit the albums I've previously passed over, and I need to spend a bunch of time with Last Will and Testament.

I really like how I have an uncanny knack of making things I want to do sound like chores too. My therapist has a lot of work to do.