Opeth: The Moor

Continuing my list of the Top 10 albums of 1999, coming in at #9 is Still Life by Opeth. Opeth were still three years away from releasing their genre-defining album Blackwater Park, one of the greatest metal albums ever recorded, when they started their climb towards world metal domination with their fourth album in 1999. Leader Mikael Åkerfeldt had been perfecting his songwriting for several years when this album finally coalesced the band’s sound into something unlike any other metal of the time. His songwriting method of allowing the band to develop disparate musical ideas into fully-formed songs is in full effect on this album. Moving from quiet, peaceful acoustic movements into louder, aggressive bursts of death metal, and shifting his vocals between clean to growl, this hour-long, seven-song album is definitive prog-metal. 25 years later, the world of metal is dominated by bands who have mastered the styles of metal first introduced by bands such as Opeth (prog), In Flames (melodic death), Sepultura (groove), Darkthrone (black), Enslaved (extreme), and others. This is great for metal fans in the 2020s, and modern metal is a world-wide force filled with talented bands and musicians. However, metal in the ’90s was struggling to move beyond the already stale thrash of Metallica and boring basics of Guns n’ Roses before bands like Opeth sprung up around the world to reinvent metal for a new generation. Still Life was a fitting final nail in the coffin of ’90s metal and heralded the sounds to come.

To learn more about Opeth, check out their Wikipedia page.

To listen to all of the songs of the day, check out the Radio Faux Show Song of the Day playlist.

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