Album Review: Opeth – In Cauda Venenum

If you are expecting a return to old school Opeth on this, their 13th album, you will be disappointed. However, if you were after an eccentric, further developed version of what they’ve been doing for the last eight years, then In Cauda Venenum will be right up your alley. Again, this album sounds like it was written and recorded in the '70s under the influence of all manner of recreational pharmaceuticals. It’s just that this time, creatively, they have taken what they’ve done on their previous three records and pushed it several steps further. It’s like they have deliberately set out to up the trippy '70s-style prog-rock ante significantly. It is all over the place, and yet strangely cohesive at the same time. It is an odd bod of a record, and yet oddly compelling.

There are no death growls on the record whatsoever, just Mikael Akerfeldt’s smooth, soulful yet powerful rock vocals. Indeed, there is nary a heavy guitar to be heard throughout. The instrumentation is a whacked-out, string- and key-laden cacophony that somehow still seems to make perfect sense. There are strange voices running through the soundtrack, dark gothic choirs, folky and jazzy moments, and even a Swedish language version of the entire album. It is an idiosyncratic, purely self-indulgent experimental masterpiece. 

Akerfeldt and co obviously decided that there was nowhere else to go with the progressive-death-metal thing. With every new record they prove that there are a million-and-one places they can take the '70s psych-prog sound.