2017 - August 27 - Eternal Rains Will Come

I needed a good excuse to play some Opeth, and hurricane Harvey (now a tropical storm) gave me just what I needed. I hope Opeth is wrong and that everyone in the areas affected by the storm is ok. Opet's 2014 album Pale Communion opened with this gem filled with throwback harmonies that really gives me Blue Oyster Cult vibes... Eternal Rains Will Come.

December 18 - Folklore

So the song was Folklore from Opeth's fantastic Heritage album from 2011, and the musical project was Storm Corrosion, which is a very different project than most of the other music in my collection - but it is one I really enjoyed. Heritage was the first album where Opeth embraced a progressive sound and stripped away the cookie monster vocals - and really turned into the band they are today, two great albums later. Folklore to me has a very Scandinavian sound to it, which is present throughout the album. On one of the songs they use Bjørn J:son Lindh on flute as one of the guest musicians. This has a special significance to me, as he was the person playing the flute on the music to the radio drama Tordivelen Flyr I Skumringen - or The Scarab Flies In Twilight - written by Swedish authors Maria Gripe and Kay Pollak. It was aired in the summer of 1979 with 12 episodes, one every Saturday during Saturday Children's Hour, one of the longest running radio shows in the world, running from 1924 to 2010, only interrupted by World War 2. I loved listening to this radio program, and my favorite part was always the radio dramas - and the long summer ones were my favorite.

However, there is a second guest artist on the track featuring Bjørn J:son Lindh. This guest artist is a legendary jazz musician who played on one of the best known fusion songs ever, and I am looking for this musician and this song. The song was a tribute to a well known New York jazz club - although that might have made this too easy. So... Who is this musician, what is the band he played in that recorded this song, what is the song, what is the album, and what year was it from?

October 11 - Deliverance

I have a goto song for when I really need to get some aggression out. Well, actually, I have several, but a lot of them are just not long enough. At 13:36, this one song by Opeth really does the trick for me, though - and it has enough quiet sections to calm me down a little before the epic final four minutes (starting at 9:38). This song is the title track on their 2002 album, and I keep getting blown away by it. Deliverance.

September 30 - The Grand Conjuration

Today I will be spending listening to Opeth's 12th studio album Sorceress. Opeth has travelled long distances musically, and the song that really got me into Opeth is a far cry from what they do these days. I do expect to play more music from Sorceress as well, but for now, I am going to let you hear Opeth with all the growled vocals (as well as the clean vocals they used to mix in). I sometimes struggle with what some people refer to as "cookie monster" vocals, but think that Opeth was able to do something really good with it (they have not been using it on their last three albums including Sorceress) - and The Grand Conjuration is really a great example of how they blend the two to great effect. The Grand Conjuration is from their 8th album (or observation), Ghost Reveries, which I picked up after seeing it at Meijer. It seems weird now that almost all music is out of the supermarkets that it could be a place to discover new music, but it was indeed where I first saw the cover that intrigued me. Then when I searched for the music online, this is what I listened to:

September 28 - The Wilde Flowers

One of my favorite bands is Swedish band Opeth. They are about to release a new album on Friday, and they have been controlling the output of songs, one by one, from the album. The third sample is the one that really hit me hardest. The Wilde Flowers has a riff to die for, staccato vocals, and then the eerie Opeth twist that elevates the song even higher. The title itself is per normal for Opeth a reference to obscure progressive music, as The Wilde Flowers was a British progressive band from the Canterbury scene. I am excited for Friday - looking forward to what I hope is another great record. They haven't disappointed me yet...

June 21 - Voice of Treason

One of my favorite modern prog bands is Opeth from Sweden. They started out playing black metal, then moved towards progressive metal until they finally let the growls be before the album Heritage. Their latest observation is named Pale Communion, and it is a great album that grows and grows on you as you listen to it - unless you are too stuck in the idea of metal being one thing. They are so clearly rooted in 70s harder side of progressive rock, and I could not be more pleased with the direction they are taking. Then, of course, there is the news that they now have signed to Nuclear Blast Records and are working on Sorceress, which should hit the shelves, both digitally and in the stores this fall.

Opeth is led by Mikael Åkerfeldt, who is the only original member left. Since the beginning in 1990, he has been writing, singing, and playing guitar. Martin Mendez has been with him as the steady bass player since 1997. Martin Axenroth joined on drums after Martin Lopez left in 2005. In 2007, Peter Lindgren left to be replaced by Fredrik Åkesson, and finally, Joakim Svalberg joined in 2011 on the newest instrument to be added, keyboards, following Per Wiberg, who started as a touring member in 2005. Their metal fans have agonized over the musical turn they have taken, but Mikael Åkerfeldt follows his own vision, which to me is a hallmark of someone who is in it for the right reason: the music itself. Judge that for yourself when you listen to Voice of Treason from Pale Communion while we wait for Sorceress!

April 27 - The Drapery Falls

Not every song requires too much in terms of an introduction. Opeth made mixing metal and melancholy into an art form on their fantastic album Blackwater Park, especially the song The Drapery Falls. Hopefully you will appreciate the growls toward the end in the context of this song. Give it a chance - you'll get sucked in!

February 12 - Starless

King Crimson offers many challenges to listeners. Although their earliest incarnations are pretty traditional progressive rock, the early to mid-seventies incarnation of the group started experimenting quite heavily. Led by Robert Fripp on guitar and mellotron, he is joined by Bill Bruford on drums, John Wetton on bass and vocals, and David Cross on violin and keyboards - and this is really a spectacular collection of musicians creating very new and different music.

Today's song, Starless, starts out as a ballad with a beautiful, haunting melody. Robert Fripp plays the mellotron initially, an instrument that really is the precursor to the sampled keyboards of today. Every time you hit a key, the mellotron plays a tape - just like a cassette player would - for that specific note. If you wanted to change instrument sounds, you needed to replace the cartridge, which was a pretty massive thing - there is a great video of this in the Making of Heritage film that came with Opeth's Heritage album. It is also one of the main instruments of early progressive rock - and it was all over King Crimson's music.

Anyway, the melody is hauntingly beautiful, as I said. The first time I heard it was actually in a concert recording of Motorpsycho performing it back in 96 or thereabout. I also had heard an edited version of the song, but that version took away the truly challenging part of this song, which is the guitar part. Robert Fripp holds one note, played on two alternating strings. He holds that one note while the bass plays a pretty heavy and groove laden riff, creating really strong tension between the two instruments that the listener keep waiting for a resolution to, but it goes on for almost 4 minutes - from about 4'15" to about 8'00 - yet it is still not completely resolved as the band enters a full free form sounding mode (although I suspect Robert Fripp has it carefully planned out). There is eventually resolution, and after the long build-up of tension, the release the resolution brings is immensely powerful. I know the instrumental part of this song gives me goosebumps every time - and it needs to be played loud for maximum effect!

January 4 - Routine

Steven Wilson. I was introduced to this English genius through Opeth, who I most certainly will be addressing later this year - and in all likelihood I will do so more than once as well. But let's talk about Steven Wilson. He started the band Porcupine Tree, which he initially created as a fictional band with a long backstory and album titles before starting to record as the band. The first album, On the Sunday of Life, was a compilation of the best songs he had released on several cassettes in the late 80s, and for the second album, Up on the Downstair, was also largely a solo project, but featured guest appearances by Richard Barbieri (keys) and Colin Edwin (bass), who later joined the band full force. He did expand the band further, first with Chris Maitland on drums, who was replaced by Gavin Harrison, and finally adding John Wesley as a touring member on vocals and guitar.

Porcupine Tree started gaining notoriety in progressive rock circles, and Steven Wilson's visions led him to recognition both within traditional progressive rock and in progressive metal. He produced Fish (of Marillion fame from the 80's) on both his Sunsets on Empire and Raingods with Zippos albums in 1997 and 1999, lent some of his talents to help produce Marillion's marillion.com album in 1999 (they have had Steve Hogarth as their lead singer since they got rid of Fish in 1988), and even worked with Norwegian singer Anja Garbarek, producing her 2001 album Waving and Smiling.

However, I did not know any of this at the time. I had given up on both Fish and Marillion (very prematurely, as it turns out), and Anja Garbarek was of no interest to me (I had heard some of her early work, and while it was ok, it wasn't my bag). Neither had I heard of Opeth yet, although Steven Wilson in 2001 produced one of their masterpieces, Blackwater Park. I actually stumbled across Opeth through sheer dumb luck, about 5 years later.

Fall 2006 through the summer of 2007 was a pretty grueling year for me. I was working full time at Alma College, and I was finishing up my Master of Arts degree in counseling at Spring Arbor University. On the face of it, it doesn't seem so bad, but finishing my counseling degree meant completing a practicum and internship, which was on top of the full time job. So my weekly schedule consisted of leaving home around 7 am and not coming home again until 9 pm or so Monday through Wednesday, then being home at "normal" time so I could be with the girls on Thursday evenings while my then wife worked, and "normal" time on Fridays - but with additional internship hours on Saturday mornings, which let me to miss several of Emma's soccer games. I know there are many people out there who have schedules that are harder than mine was, but for me, this year was still tough, and the only reason I could do it was that I knew that there was a light at the end of the tunnel - and I was hoping it wasn't a train.

So while I was doing this internship, I also walked the aisles of Meijer from time to time, and I always looked in their CD section (this was when they actually still took in CDs outside of the best sellers). While looking, I found this very interesting looking CD called Ghost Reveries by a band called Opeth. I had no clue what it was, so I put it back. However, I kept coming back to it, looking at it, thinking that this looks like something I will like. I eventually got to the point that I remembered the name after leaving the store, and during one of my no-shows sitting in one of the back rooms in the computer lab at MCCs Greenville M-Tec building (that was the name at the time - and yes, it had several study rooms in the computer lab back then), I searched YouTube for their music, and I found the song The Grand Conjuration from Ghost Reveries - and love affair was born. As usual, I filled in the back catalogue, album by album, and that's how I started seeing the name Steven Wilson pop up. He was the producer for the three albums leading up to Ghost Reveries: Blackwater Park (2001), Deliverance (2002), and Damnation (2003). The chain effect had begun...

So now we are at the beginning of 2016, looking back at 2015, and Steven Wilson released Hand. Cannot. Erase. It is his fourth proper solo album, and while it is not as good as Grace for Drowning (2011), it is still easily in my top 5 for 2015 - and yes, the list will eventually be published... To get you all started, I have selected what for me is the emotional centerpiece of Hand. Cannot. Erase., a song about loss and grief (this is starting to look like a theme here) called Routine.