Concert Review: Opeth, Nokia Theater, NYC, Sept 18, 2008

After two long years of being out of town or screwed over ticket-wise whenever Opeth came around, I finally got the chance to see them at Nokia Theater last night in NYC. I must say that from the bottom of my blackened soul it was worth the wait.

My first live experience with Opeth was at Gigantour, 2006, when I realized that I would much rather see Opeth play a nice, long set than sit through yet ANOTHER mammoth hour and a half of Lamb of God. Since the majority of Opeth’s tracks are seven plus minutes, Opeth as an opener gets you about five songs, including an abridged version of Mikael Akerfeldt’s hilarious and urbane stage banter. Last night I got my wish, with a long and well-chosen set list that opened with Heir Apparent, moved into Grand Conjuration, surprised with Serenity Painted Death, and finally ended with a crowd favorite, Demon of the Fall. A pristine encore of Drapery Falls (my personal favorite) rounded out the evening.

Thirty dollars well spent, my friends . . .

An Opeth show is a rich brew of seriousness, humor and traditional metal jubilation. The music is so eloquent at times and, well, important, while a the same time so very listenable and satisfying in a primal metal sense, that it’s hard for even the most jaded fan not to be impressed. One would think that any band might have a hard time translating multiple influences into a live metal show, but Opeth does so effortlessly. This is, in a very real sense, what makes an Opeth concert more of an event than a mere performance, and is probably the reason why Opeth continually draws a capacity crowd.

As always, I spent a certain amount of time watching the audience. The first half of the show, I found myself smashed against the stage with the young rabble. I eventually dragged my aged self to the convenient second level (that Nokia Theater is a well-designed venue) with the chin-scratchers and the musicians, all listening very intently as if to the description of a homework assignment. I smiled inwardly as I heard things like, “Did you hear that passage into the Diminished 7th? Frigging amazing man!” I love that stuff.

I was not surprised at the HUGE reception for Fredrik Åkesson. I was one of the many who exclaimed “Holy shit, who is that guy?!!” when I saw him with Arch Enemy at Gigantour in 2006. The man has indeed claimed his rightful place in the victory circle. Real, uncompromising talent always wins out in the end.

As far as Martin Mendez, Martin Axenrot and Per Wiberg are concerned, you could have bounced a quarter off that foundation. Precise is too weak a word to describe it. Razor-sharp, perhaps? Thunderous? And Mikael? We do so love that pioneering mixture of death metal growl and clear, plaintive vocals, as well as the austere (and not over-played) slow leads dropped in precisely the right places – all delivered with gothic aplomb. Plus, NO ONE delivers better stage banter than Mr. Åkerfeldt.

All in all, THE best show of the year so far. Let’s see if anyone can top it. I have my doubts.

Note to Mainstream Journalists from a Metal Fan: PISS OFF

Normally I try to present a fairly positive voice on this blog no matter what I write about. But with the new Metallica album out, I have to sound off on the negative.

A few weeks ago, the NY Times had a huge cover story in their Sunday arts section about Metallica. Of course, being a long-time metal fan, and being altogether sick of reading about credit woes and failing banks, I had to read the entire thing. About halfway through the article, I felt this gnawing pain that I always feel when reading about metal in the mainstream press. The pain has always been there, like a thorn in the back of my mind, splitting me into a newer and blacker level of consciousness every time I pick up a USA Today or a NY Times and see the words ‘Heavy Metal’ in a sub-header. It’s the pain of reading something written by an asshole that has NO IDEA what the fuck he’s talking about. It’s the sheer agony of listening to drivel being offered to the world as holy writ because it’s in Times New Roman and it wouldn’t be there if it weren’t absolute gospel.

I’m talking about mainstream critics – the kind you find in the NY Times, The Village Voice, the Boston Globe, et. al. Don’t you just love how these idiots babble on for five paragraphs just to show how smart they are before they actually get to the album? I know, we’re all supposed to be impressed that they graduated from Amherst College with a 3.4. We’re supposed to be floored by the unreadable run-on sentences filled with knee-jerk postmodern theory, as if Roland Barthes himself descended from heaven to let us know that heavy metal was finally important enough to not mean anything. We’re supposed to love that, right? Well, not me. I tell you, I’d like to stick one of my size thirteen engineering boots up every editor’s ass each time he or she shuffled one of these moronic screeds into print. Fuck!!

It always goes this way: reviewer Sidney Snide starts out with the ‘heavy metal is no longer just for parking lots and trailer parks anymore’ routine. (This might or might not be preceded by two paragraphs of filler straight from the pages of Art Forum, depending on the snob-level of the periodical.) Then he saunters into a bit of an historical recounting of the band’s history pulled straight from Wikipedia. Just to show some street-cred, he compares the album to Vulgar Display of Power or something he might have heard ten years ago at a party while he was trying to pick up an undergrad anthropology major. He does a song-by-song blow, which is unnecessary, not only because he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but because we only want to know his overall impression of the album and if we wanted particulars we’d listen to the whole fucking album ourselves. Then he trails off into some sociological cant that he’ll repeat for his next review of music he doesn’t listen to or know anything about.

Do we care about any of this? No. All we care about is whether or not the reviewer thinks the album is good, and, briefly, why. That’s all we want. And if he doesn’t know anything about the genre or respect it, he shouldn’t be reviewing it. That goes for ALL critics. There’s nothing worse than reading a review by a writer who clearly does not like or understand the genre he’s writing about. I don’t write about emo here, because I don’t like it, I don’t listen to it, and I don’t know much about it. Sounds simple, eh? Let’s call it a rule.

Do you want my review of the new Metallica Album? Do you really want it? OK, here it is. IT SUCKS. It’s a run-of-the-mill effort with Rick Rubin’s lazy imprimatur all over it. Sure, Rubin was a king-maker in the past - basically a modern day Ahmet Ertegun. We’ll never, ever forget what he did for Slayer and Anthrax, but post Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rubin really doesn’t have anything to offer the metal community anymore. They’d have been better off using someone like Erik Rutan, who I think is one of the best metal producers out there right now. On top of this, within thirty seconds, it sounded like Metallica hasn’t really listened to any metal besides themselves in the past ten years or so. There are bands that are simply light years ahead of Metallica today (there have been since the Black album), and you’d be better off listening to them. I mean, come on! How can you come off of At the Gates or Skinless and not feel like you’re listening to a souped up version of Staind when you put on Death Magnetic?!!

As always, I respect Metallica from a historical perspective. Like those of us who were floored by Whiplash the first time we heard it on a fifth generation cassette tape, I pay my respects - as required. But there are simply better musicians making better music right now, and as I work for a living and have about a half an hour a day to really listen to music, I’ll choose them. Listening to Metallica’s new album for me is the equivalent of opening the refrigerator and expecting to find a bucket of KFC that wasn’t there thirty seconds ago. That shit just ‘aint gonna happen the way I want, so the hell with it.

As far as the critics who pretend to write about metal, go back to writing about Hot Chip or Pavement from your apartment in Williamsburg, the LES, or whatever arrondissement you inhabit. We don’t need you to tell us that we’re now culturally viable (thank you so much for that), and we ESPECIALLY don’t need any half-baked sociological treatises to explain us to ourselves. We know who we are, we’ve been who we are for a very long time, and we don’t need your help. We don’t listen to metal because it’s ironic. We listen to metal because we LIKE IT. We don’t wear Slayer shirts because they’re hip. We wear Slayer shirts because we like Slayer. We’ll be here long after the next fad has come and gone and you’re scrounging for a part-time teaching gig at the local YMCA. We’re like fucking roaches. We’ll be here FOREVER. We’ve survived without your go-ahead, and we’ll continue to do so. As a matter of fact, just to keep things interesting, we’re going to make our music even more heavy and extreme, just to give you something new to grimace about. How’s that sound?

In short, go gaze at your shoelaces somewhere else. Go to a Saviours concert and meet your friends. Compare beards while you drink Stella Artois. Just get the hell out of here.

Thank God we have our own publications anyway.