Opeth @ House of Blues, 5/6/9

This is the front runner for best live show of 2009. 

I used to listen to Opeth's Orchid all the damn time. I sampled a few of their albums since then, but not with any great affection. Looking at the band's website now, it shocks me that Orchid came out all the way back in 1994 (damn, I'm old), and they've released 10 albums since then. What a fool I've been not to pay closer attention.

What made this show so amazing? First and foremost, front man Mikael Akerfeldt is hilarious in a dead-pan Swedish sort of way. If you've ever watched Metalocalypse, think of Skwisgaar Skwigelf with a Bob Newhart or Johnathan Katz dead-pan sense of humor. There's no way to recapture the brilliance in print - the delivery was at least 50% of the amazingness - but banter ranged from discussions about Chewbacca to volunteering to get things shot into his ass.  

Oh, and the music. Sound, stage presence, unbelievably tight and competent musicianship by every member were simply overwhelming. I haven't been to a show in ages where I got chills from how fantastically every element was pulled together. Akerfeldt is the only original member of Opeth left, but he has surrounded himself with some of the finest musicians in metal toady, and boy do they know how to get a crowd to lap it all up. Consider me one of the begging drones, for I was completely transfixed. Considering I only recognized about 3 tunes, I'm definitely going to go get the back catalog. If that's what a live show is intended to do, then mission accomplished.

With this post, I'm starting a new rating system: Value:Cost ratio.  This show cost $30 (included was Enslaved, as the opener).  I would easily pay $50 to see Opeth do it again. Therefore, my rating is:

$50:$30 = 167% = A++

Enslaved @ House of Blues 5/6/9

I haven't listened to an Enslaved album since about 1998.  I think I may have saw them live at Milwaukee Metal Fest around that time, but I can't really remember.  If it weren't for this show, I might not have remembered this band ever existed. During the show, I kept thinking that the black metal scene has changed quite a bit since then, but it wasn't until the very last song of the 45-minute set that I realized what it was.  Sure, the corpse face paint is now gone, as are the bullet belts, chains and spikes (at least on stage - some in the crowd seem to be stuck in the '90s metal scene) - but that's not all that's changed.  I don't really keep up with metal at all any more, but I got to see (local band) Nachtmystium last winter at the Empty Bottle, and they were terrific. Enslaved seems to have just been past by. Their sound is a lot more polished, and their newer material is hardly black metal at all. And that's when it hit me. On their last song, they finally played something I recognized, and it was the stripped-down, treble-heavy, all screaming affair that coincides with what I grew up to know as black metal.  The rest of their set is some sort of black-metal hybrid that can't help but sound more commercial (as if anybody mainstream would buy this stuff).  It's not what "black metal" was meant to be. After all, the front man of Mayhem killed himself, in part, because he was starting to attract fans. Black metal has matured, and seems to have moved past the gothic stage show it once was and towards concentrating on the music itself, as it should be. Unfortunately, for Enslaved, this seems to have escaped their capabilities. I admit I haven't sampled much current black metal to get a sense of the scene today, but if Nachtmysitum is any example, there are bands representing the movement far better these days.