A Night out with Opeth

So I went to see Opeth last night along with my good friends Malastrana and Draeden. And I have to say that Mikael Akerfeldt and Co. put on a great show. I'll start off by going over the venue.


It was held at the Grand Regency Ballroom in San Francisco, which judging by the pictures on their website you would wonder what a high class venue like this would be doing having metal bands playing in it. Well the place was done up pretty good for about a thousand to two thousand people. The floor was wide open and there was limited seating up above. The one real drawback to this place was the lack of ventilation. Once the show starts all the doors are closed and you have all these bodies packed in close and therefore with the lack of airflow you get a combination of humidity and the floating stink of body odor and farts. But overall it was a decent place to see a show.


The first band to come out was Baroness. I guess this was their first night on the tour and just like every bands first night there are the big glitches. In this case the microphones were virtually non existent as the bassist had to signal more then once for someone to raise the volume on them. As for the band themselves it seemed they were more of a jam band then anything with the occasional bellow into the mike from the lead singer/guitarist(who incidentally looked like Animal from the Muppet Show). Musically their sound was reminiscent of The Sword and Corrosion of Conformity. Some good energy from them though.

Next up was High on Fire, a local Bay Area three piece band. Again some issues with the microphones but not as bad as the openers. It was what I can describe as stoner rock meets thrash. The singer/guitarist reminded me of Jack Black mimicking Lemmy of Motorhead.


Ah then the main event. Opeth came out and started off the night with "Heir Apparent" from the Watershed CD. This track pretty much set the tone for the whole night where the crowd could not get into a rhythm of whether they should mosh, start shoving, crowd surf or whatever due to Opeth's trademark tempo changes. Mikael Akerfeldt was brilliant on stage though with his crowd interaction. Almost between every song he would have a humorous conversation with the crowd. Here I'll let him introduce the band for you. Sound and video quality may vary.



Some of the highlights of the show was when introducing the track "The Night and the Silent Water" from Morningrise, Mikael referred to himself as having Musketeer hair and thinking Opeth would rule the world. Little did they know that no one cared as he put it.At another part Mikael busted out with Slow and Easy by Whitesnake and made mention that Opeth was nominated for some award against the Snake and Def Leppard. They didn't think they'd win but to make some sort of statement maybe they should piss on someone to be metal. The prim and proper delivery of these lines was priceless.

Here is some more footage of the show during parts of the more mellow times.




Soundwise from my postion, which was to the right of the stage about 5 rows back at time the sound was good but other times heavy distortion to where it was hard to make out what song it was. From what I'm being told the sound in the back near the soundboards was awesome. Every nuance of the songs was clear.

All in all it was a fun night and Opeth put on a great show. Here is the set list for the show.

Heir Apparent
The Grand Conjuration
Serenity Painted Death
Hope Leaves
The Lotus Eater
The Night and the Silent Water
Deliverance
Demon of the Fall
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The Drapery Falls

Thanks to Malastrana for transport and Draeden for pics and vid clips.