Album review: Opeth – The Last Will And Testament

By BRIAN GIFFIN

OPETH’S 14th studio album takes a while to get into, and a while to get going. Having heard the entire album months ago, rather than just the first two underwhelming singles, I’ve been waiting for the moment for The Last Will and Testament to suddenly hit me. 

It still hasn’t. 

Maybe it’s the way the first part of the album comes across as merely a continuation of the previous two, perhaps even a little bit too self-referential. The story line is compelling and Ian Anderson adds a certain jauntiness to the telling but the band overall aren’t really stretching themselves. Mikael Åkerfeldt’s thunderous growl makes an early return and given he’s regularly exercised it on tour over the years, it sounds as dark and effortless as always. It’s an aspect of Opeth that enhanced the contrast between light and darkness, the balance of sad melancholy and baleful malevolence that spanned their early work. Åkerfeldt bringing it back on this album makes this no more a return to their older ways than Death Magnetic was a big return to thrash for Metallica. It’s there, and it’s welcome, and well used in the context of this album’s overarcing concept – but apart from that, this is the same Opeth from Pale Communion, Sorceress and, maybe more so, In Cauda Venenum.

It is significantly shorter across the board, the songwriting serving the story with more concise songs than we’re used to from Opeth. After a sleepy start, the suite of tracks starting at “§4” is where The Last Will and Testament really begins to unfold itself. Their gift for instrumental grandiosity and skill for unconventional song structures carries the story to its surprise conclusion with an interplay of voices – Anderson’s narration, Åkerfeldt pitting his cleans against his growls – against the backdrop of flutes (Anderson again), strings, dark metal riffing, seventies-style organ and towering solos, and yet nothing reveals itself as a true highlight. 

As an Opeth fan, one who can even find some enjoyment in some aspects of Heritage, The Last Will and Testament feels like a disappointment: neither terrible, nor hardly their best. When the glow of the growl being back starts to fade, others looking for more in this album than that might come to the same conclusion.

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