Benighted Feeling

Angling Feeling

Kaipa was a nice surprise for me. I'd heard some of Roine Stolt's work with Transatlantic and The Flower Kings, but not anything from the band that gave him his "start". I like the use of two vocalists, one male and one female. Clearly some Yes influence here, including a possible reference with the phrase "Heart of the Sunrise" appearing in the lyrics. There are some nice dynamic transitions as well as Yes style rapid runs of notes in the introduction. I'm eager to hear more from this band.




Benighted

The iPod randomly selected this track from Opeth's album Still Life. I really like this band and this song is an excellent example of why. A death metal band which has been given the label "progressive" presumably owing to the musical range and complexity of their work which shows a wide variety of musical influences. It is typical of Opeth to contrast a harder death metal sound and rough vocals with softer passages and clean vocals. I've long been impressed with Mikael Åkerfeldt's voice in both modes. A strong "clean" vocalist, he also manages to make his "rough" vocals musical, unlike many in death metal whose sound quickly becomes monotonous. Having said much about their death metal roots, this song betrays little of that, being an acoustic guitar driven clean vocal song. It conjures a lonely, somber mood, as suggested by the title.