I had no idea Swedes Opeth were big enough to play Oxford Brookes’ Student Union, rather than the Zodiac, but it seems their latest album Ghost Reveries has made something of a break through, and elevated them from underground cult favourites to surprising metal heavyweights. They’re certainly not your usual suspects, mixing native black metal with folky elements and prog structures, but it’s an unusual blend that’s ultimately quite captivating.

There’s some confusion amongst the crowd as to whether Akercocke are playing, but apparently they were only on the bill for London, so it falls to fellow Swedes Burst to entertain the audience for the build up. They seem a reasonable choice as, while slightly more electronic and not as folky, their music has similar dynamics to Opeth. Unfortunately the stage show’s not the most interesting, but they’re enough to keep the accumulating crowd from restlessness.

Opeth themselves take the stage around 9, and, although they start with ‘Ghost of Perdition’, aren’t just here to plug their new album. In fact, only a scant handful of recent songs are played, in amongst rarer old tracks like ‘White Cluster’ and ‘Under The Weeping Moon’, which Mikael Akerfeldt warns will probably sound shit next too newer material. He’s wrong though; while the older stuff is generally heavier, with more growling death metal vocals, the more melodic later material complements it well.

With songs averaging around ten minutes in length, and veering from headbangingly heavy to lighters aloft moments within a single track, the band are barely into double figures even by the end of their encore two hours later, but that’s not what matters – some bands can’t get as much into three songs as Opeth do in one. As Mikael says in the banter that punctuates the (relatively few) breaks between each epic, it’s sometimes hard to know when an Opeth song ends, but no one really wants them to.

While the band aren’t the most visually exciting onstage, unlike say Apocalyptica, their musicianship is of a very high standard, and Mikael’s rapport with the crowd is far better than expected, answering hecklers with ease. Not every metaller’s cup of tea – there wasn’t even a moshpit – but Opeth are a very special band, who put on a very special show.
(4/5)

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