Heritage is the tenth studio album for Swedish death/prog metal band Opeth, a band I'm quite the fan of. There mix of death metal with prog metal has produced at least a couple of fantastic albums (Still Life, Blackwater Park) and easily a couple more that are on the cusp of that status (Deliverance, Ghost Reveries). The weird thing is about this band is that while I think the band is great, I'm very rarely in a mood to listen to them but with a new one out I felt it was time to get back into listening to them.
This album to me is just to cut it short, boring as hell as the album is just straight up prog rock and really slow at that. The album starts with the album title track Heritage a piano piece to begin the album very nice sounds and a solid beginning to the album. After that you think the albums really going to come out and show us more of the Opeth fans have loved for a while, instead we get bursts of music from the band. At least the second track keeps it going throughout with a decent prog rock track which does show off Mikael Akerfeldt's vocals really well. The guitar and keyboard trade off each other well also.
I Feel The Dark continues the prog rock sound they're clearly going for on this album, it starts off quite full in sound and slowly drops down to again do its bursts of sound thing. With its borderline BAS moments the songs are really slow at times and definitely stripped back.The album totally drops to walking pace through the middle of this album with tracks like Nepenthe, Haxprocess and Famine all really slow working songs, very patient listening needed for these tracks, they're alright but they just aren't anything to get excited by. Famine is probably the pick of the slow songs but that's not really saying much as these songs are pretty boring overall.
The only track I dug on this album was The Lines In My Hands, which didn't look to slow down too much, the bass line is sick and the drums aren't as boring as they were earlier. The guitar in this reminds me of spanish mariachi players so theres another positive on this song, to go with an electric guitar appearance late in the track. The album again goes back to slow prog tracks that do nothi8ng at all for me, by this stage I've basically lost interest in hearing these types of tracks.
This album is just really "meh" theres very little to take from this album as an Opeth fan. None of that death/prog metal that made them a great band in my opinion, maybe they just wanted a change in sound for an album, I hope so cause this can't be the new direction for the band. Please!
Overall Rating: 5.5/10
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