It’s good to be Opeth right now. Six months ago the Stockholm-based band released Ghost Reveries, the universally acclaimed album that tops any release in their already highly-esteemed catalog. In the past six years, they’ve pushed their way onto the global metal stage with a vengeance and seemed poised to add even more to their success. So what’s a progressive death metal band to do? Have a two and a half hour concert at a theater, opened by a ballet, of course.
Creating a Spectacle
The scene was the Town Hall, a theater/music hall located in a National Historic building off of Times Square, New York, decorated in a style that reminded me more of opera than of heavy metal and usually host to events like film festivals and jazz concerts. Opening the evening was a performance by Ballet Deviare, a group of dancers who specialize in creating "the maelstrom of a marriage between the beauty and grace of ballet, and the force and brutality of metal." The dancers were to be followed by an extended performance by the band, playing a chronologically-ordered set list. The band even titled the show: "Chronology MCMXCIV – MMV: A Live Observation by Opeth." Basically, it was the most pretentious thing possible – the spirits of Genesis and Yes would be proud.Ballet Deviare Takes the Stage
So how did it turn out? The dancers were not much to write home about. Dancing a piece called "...And the Devil Knows Why" set to title track of the album "Deliverance," the team of four dancers did not show as much ability as I would have expected from a professional dancer. More importantly though, there was a great deal more the choreographer could have done to explore the music. Even though Opeth’s website mentions that Ballet Deviare premiered this piece in December, 2004, 14 months later it still looks like it was slapped together 30 minutes before the show, leaving me with the feeling that this company relies more on the shock value of combining dance with heavy metal to make an impression than any real talent.Opeth Takes the Stage
But all was not amiss; Opeth made up for the deficiencies of their opener very quickly. Launching into the driving opener of "Under the Weeping Moon," the band played a powerful set based on two things: rarity of performance (many of the songs had never been played before American audiences before) and creating a flowing sense of mood, heightened by the stream of dark and gothic images (collapsed buildings, sepia-toned dolls, churches, ghosts) displayed on a screen at the back of the stage. Letting myself go into the flow of sound as the band extended a bridge at the end of "A Fair Judgment" and built it into a thundering crescendo, I felt like I could sense the higher idea behind "Chronology MCMXCIV – MMV:" that Opeth meant this concert to be taken like an emotional journey, going from despair ("The Night and the Silent Water") to rage ("The Leper Affinity") to a calm tinged with sadness ("Windowpane") to horror ("Ghosts of Perdition"). It was progressive metal at its best: creating a work that is not only powerful to see and hear, but open to as much interpretation as possible. In this aspect the concert succeeded admirably.One aspect where the concert failed however was time management. Apparently some sort of curfew, presumably set by the venue, limited the performance time; front man Mikael Åkerfeldt repeatedly told the crowd he wasn’t going to be able to talk much that evening because the band was on a schedule. I was disappointed we weren’t going to get a repeat performance in line with the death metal singing clinic from last November; truth be told, I crave Åkerfeldt’s cultured Swedish deadpans as much as I do Opeth’s performances and the band had a particularly energized full house to work with. If we could have done without Ballet Deviare and gotten half an hour more music and chatter, I don’t think any member of the audience would have been disappointed.
