It was fitting for me that my last real show of a busy, stressful 2014 was the Opeth – In Flames co-headline tour. Although both bands are now products of an older generations’ music scene, both bands still have some swerve in their steps and in the case of Opeth, they had one of the best albums of the last year. know a lot of my peers and friends were at Pig Destroyer on this night in Boston proper. Much internet squabbling was made over the preceding months about what fanbase was wasting their money on this night, by missing the other band. Plus, I had my special lady with me on this night, also an old-school fan, so date night in Woostah it was!
Seeing Red Fang in the opening slot shouldn’t be that big of a surprise. We get it wrong consistently in America; where we want all the bands to be the same style on every bill. I for one felt it was refreshing to have these rising stars in their own right on this tour. They also have a lot of fans in common based on the reception they got, playing a brief set of their best known material. Red Fang also leans a tad towards prog at times too, so I could totally see them come out of the blocks with their next album being an out and out Mastodon/Baroness/70s prog worship. They can pull it off too. Trust.
Morphing into a band with almost three distinctly different eras of a back catalogs at this rate, In Flames had a mostly excited crowd on their hands to see a set of their recent hits and singles. Although the pits were kind of weak looking, most people sang a long with newer material, showing that the fans that pay still count (record buyers, concert goers) more than haters . While older fans in the room sighed collectively at the fact that ‘Cloud Connected’ and ‘Trigger’ came back to back tonight, a signifier in the timeline when this bands’ sound changed forever, there were set high points. Maybe five percent of the crowd even acknowledged ‘Only For The Weak’ from Clayman. The band does what they want to clearly, oblivious to trends or angry fanboy wishes. Still, the band put on a fine show.
Finally it was time for Opeth. Considering the shared lighting rig, the change-over tonight seemed a bit overlong, but when they finally came on, it was all good. No real surprises in terms of performance, just flawless prog rock majesty. The audience seemed really keyed into Mikael Åkerfeldt tonight, they screamed with delight at him every time he took a solo or led a passage. Each member of the band really displayed their musical command in these longer-form pieces, and makes them more than just a front man with a vision and some other dudes, like many acts.
Even if modern Opeth albums have fallen out of favor with their original fanbase, when they started playing a track like ‘The Moor’ from Still Life the entire building shook with elation. It was a gem and make no mistake, Mikael can still growl amazingly, whenever he wants to. Other set list highlights were ‘The Drapery Falls’, the sublime and depressive ‘Windowpane’, and a brilliant version of ‘Deliverance’. When they jam that long ending start/stop riff at the end of a show, it is one of the best moments you could ever experience in rock or metal. The band had a five-minute standing ovation after they left the stage, but there was no encore on this night.
Opeth Set List:
WORDS: KEITH CHACHKES
PHOTOS: HILLARIE JASON PHOTOGRAPHY