[Gig Review] Opeth 14.2.2009

Rare treat we had in Finland, Opeth, a swedish band combining the brutality of death metal and the beauty of acoustic into an exotic mixture, let's just call it progressive death metal. Their songs combine both the chill relaxed atmosphere and the in-your-face brutal power, often breaking ten minutes in length. Be it clean vocals or growling, Mikael Åkerfeldt seems to have the best of both worlds. The band has fully acoustic pieces in their repertoire as well.

I'm here to talk about their Club Teatria gig in Oulu on the 14th of February 2009. I'm proud to say that they sounded better live than on studio records, very few bands are that good, no joke. They offered a good set of songs from various albums, the highlights for me being "Deliverance", "Godhead's Lament" and "The Lotus Eater". The light show was on sync with the music and reflected each song's mood with fitting colors during every phase of the song. The sound quality was astoundingly clear, almost all of the important melodies were crystal clear and easy to listen to. Mikael gave nice speeches, he is really modest and can add some good humor into the mix. Lots of respect to Mikael for bringing this fantastic band to where it is today.

The gig was definitely superb all-around and I was even able to catch some of the action on my mobile phone. Enjoy (adding these only because they are captured by me):






























































Hooks up! (insider stuff)