Anteater

^ Metal that can even appeal to someone not normally into that side of the musicverse is something special indeed...I'd be interested to know if 'Rejoice' was actually used in any commercials though. Maybe the corporate world is catching D-Townsend fever.

Anyhoo...



With the release of this excellent album came a question that's fairly interesting in its own right: can a "classic" metal band release something completely cut off from that aspect of their musical architecture and still be "accepted" as a metal band?

According to dozens upon dozens of metal "best-of" lists this year, the answer seems to be a big yes. Opeth are no strangers to prog: Lead singer Mikael Akerfeldt's obvious obsession with the dark, Hammond-drenched occultic rock of his youth has been ingrained in Opeth's sound since Still Life from the late 90's and beyond. And this isn't even the first time we've gotten a completely "non-metal" album from him either: 2003's Damnation and 2011's Heritage would have fit right in on a playlist between Black Sabbath's Paranoid and Camel's first two albums on mid 70's "indie" radio.

While I was initially a tad underwhelmed by Pale Communion when it hit stateside earlier this year, subsequent listens since that time has eventually allowed it to eclipse 80% of my existing (and very excellent) list. The "why" of it is a bit harder to quantify: its definitely the strongest of the "non-metal" Opeth albums in their lengthy canon, but it might also be due to songs like the luscious 'River' and the surprisingly soulful closer 'Faith In Others', pieces of a great puzzle that mark a subtle difference in that kind of material we've gotten from the band so far.

It's kinda fascinating really, having observed these guys over twenty some years completely shed many of the traits that initially drew in their core audience. Hell, you can literally hear Opeth coming to grips with Mikael's new "vision" for the band over the course of these eight songs, coalescing into that vivid early 70's time capsule that Heritage or Mikael's earlier collaboration with Steven Wilson, Storm Corrosion, really wanted to be but ultimately weren't. Sometimes less is more, and there's an organic sense of progression to Pale Communion that isn't "quite" there in the previously mentioned material. It's a small thing, but it makes all the difference to the long-term listener.

Rock music will continue to progress in a literal sense past the trappings of previous decades with the help of many, many forward thinking bands in a variety of times and places. Many will fail, some will succeed, and few might even make some money at it. But for those of us who don't mind looking back into the old well tread heart of the experimental early 70's, this record could very well be remembered as the incantation that came the closest to raising it from the tomb for a larger audience's benefit.

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