This is the last album review I published last year. Review-wise, last year was slow. 2024 was interesting in ways but it certainly was off-balance, I feel. Quite low on energy, all those things. Trying to pick things back up and I’m getting there, for now.
Anyway it was a slow year and I took this one on without feeling much for it, and I’m not sure why I took it on. It took some time to find the words to talk about the album in a way that I felt was justifiable. It’s a decent album, but although I could get behind it, I wasn’t sure what I could say about it and I think that comes through here. Still, as a review as a review I think what I wrote works.
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Opeth are now up to The Last Will and Testament, which is all about the reading of a last will… and testament. It’s conceptual. It contains music. It also finds itself fitting comfortably within the limits of its runtime.
The album tells a contained and situational story, and explores themes around said story. As such, it’s a main focus, though perhaps not so much the draw. That’s likely the music itself, which is as complete as the story, and also goes through plenty of explorations. However, both need to work with each other for the whole to work.
The Last Will and Testament is less “stuffy” than the more recent stuff. It’s also less “crisp” than the older stuff, and in general more proggy and theatrical than the last few albums. A more muffled mix may have served well here, what with the story’s setting and all, but it wouldn’t necessarily be any better than how everything already is. There’s a good deal of big, heavy stuff, and a few softer and gentler moments. There’s also some occasional sections that carry a stronger sense of atmosphere. A lot of drama too, and a few differing approaches and styles coming together, and usually it all connects pretty well. Usually.
Not all the sections flow smoothly with each other, and perhaps that was the intention. However, there are times when what’s happening feels like Opeth are going “Here’s the next section, now onto the next section”. At other times, the songs move through their sections as though doing so is as natural as breathing. Individually, all the sections are quite solid and formed. From a narrative standpoint, the changes and turns and varying sections help get the story across effectively. In terms of sound, song progression and album overall, they don’t always click.
As said before, there’s some heavy stuff and there’s drama in the narrative – it makes sense, given the subject matter – and there seems to be humour throughout too. There are moments that seem like they’re mocking and laughing at some of the characters; There’s musical passages that either seem to treat the whole thing as a celebration, or something that’s a dreary, dull process. Some of what comes forward is pretty brutal, and there’s enough shifts and changes The Last Will and Testament‘s drama that helps further a sense of variability. Essentially, it doesn’t get monotonous.
Of course this doesn’t work if the songs don’t sound tight and the musicianship isn’t there, and it is. Something tells me that this wasn’t recorded live, but it feels like it was and it’s all performed really well. From a moment-to-moment perspective, everything is in its right place and happens when it’s meant to happen. When the album gets heavy, it feels heavy. When it gets tense, it gets tense. If it needs to hold focus on a moment, Opeth pull back enough to give that moment space. Even if some shifts are a bit jarring, overall the album’s order and length of things makes a lot of sense, and the musicianship helps make that the case.
In a way The Last Will and Testament argues for approaching it as a specific thing, but maybe not what it thinks it is. Considering its various changes and drama and all that, the album comes off more as a compact musical framed as a concept album performed by a prog band than it does a prog album. Perhaps it works best thought of as that rather than anything else.
The Last Will and Testament is also Opeth doing whatever they feel works best. It takes from history and looks forward. However, even though my claim of it being a compact musical, ultimately it’s best to go in expecting music. There are parts that are dense, parts that aren’t, and it goes through a few forms.
Overall there’s a lot of good here, but for a number of reasons it’s going to be divisive. I don’t know if I can out-and-out recommend The Last Will and Testament. I also don’t know if I can say it’s not worth the time. It is pretty upfront, but it’s also not immediate. It’s not much of a people-pleaser, which is unsurprising, but it does offer quite a lot. Perhaps it’ll take time to work out how worth experiencing it is, and maybe that’s a good thing.
Stupidity Hole 