The Opeth concert was fantastic. They played two one-hour sets, the first with their acoustic work and the second ridiculously heavier. It really was like hearing two utterly different bands who just happened to look identical. Although, to be fair, most fans were there for the heavier Deliverence stuff, it was the first set that really made the gig incredible. Hearing these soft songs played live was completely different to the Damnation album iself, because you could hear this undercurrent of power surging forward each time the guitars or drums rose to the fore. While the vocals were soft and steady, these were metallers who were dying to break free into some seriously powerful riffs, and the feeling of restrained and unwillingly harnessed power was electrifying.
And that first set made it all the more enjoyable when they resurfaced for the heavier set: the crowd was already warmed up and broke lose the moment the band appeared. The only downside (other than the crowd which included a few too many lager louts) was that the set was almost entirely restricted to their last three albums, a pity since many earlier songs would not have seemed out of place at all. As this was being recorded for a DVD release, I can only hope that separate recordings of earlier concerts or music videos will be included to give the disc a more career-spanning overview.
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