Opeth conquer IIT- Madras

“Ha ha ha, guffaw guffaw!!! You’ve got to be kidding yourself if you think Opeth will ever come to India. The closest they’ll ever come to India is probably Dubai”, said a confident self-proclaimed music-enthusiast, whose teeth I felt like breaching for laughing off my suggestion of someone bringing down Opeth to India.

The dream to watch Opeth live in concert soon turned into reality when IIT-Madras announced that they would be bringing down OPETH for their annual festival, Saarang. From that day onwards, nothing else mattered except the countdown to ‘Opeth live at Saarang on 25th January- THE ROCK SHOW (yes an extremely lame name for a metalfest).’

So the 25th had finally arrived and thousands of die hard Opeth fans were seen queuing hours before the gates even opened. The gates opened up at around 6.15 and the first band for the night , Demonic Resurrection were quick to take centre stage and try to resurrect their status of being one of the best in the Indian Metal Scene. No sooner had DR started playing than the crowds started chanting their trademark “Semen Dealer” and “Semenic Erection” slogans. DR played a tight half an hour set and played their crowd favourites such as ‘Journey to Solaris’, ‘Apocalyptic Dawn’ amongst others and concluded with ‘Frozen Portrait’. It was good to see Daniel Rego (the new lead guitarist) on stage and he definitely made his presence felt with his nifty guitar work. Mephisto (keys) seemed like he was on mute though and the drums seemed to be overpowering everything else.

Motherjane came in next with half-painted faces, and treated the crowd with tracks from ‘Maktub’ for 45 minutes. Watching Baiju’s fingers fly on the guitar with his Hindustani classical influenced guitar solos and riffs was like a mouthwatering appetizer for the main course (Opeth). Motherjane belted out tracks such as ‘Chasing the Sun’, ‘Broken’, ‘Fields of Sound’ which broke the crowd into a delirious rapture. It felt great to finally see a band that really deserved to open for an international headlining act do their thing, and it felt even better to see thousands in the Amphitheatre sing along to a lot of their compositions. This was probably the first time ever, I’ve seen an Indian band not get booed before the main act which just goes to show how much respect rock fanatics have for Motherjane. Suraj (vocals) ended the show by thanking the crowd, and the crowd applauded Motherjane and shouted out “RESPECT”.

Now the moment, the capacity crowd of 10,000 was waiting for and that was the grand entry of the Swedes. Although it took awhile for Opeth to get on stage with their crew taking a lot of time to test the equipment, the band finally entered to a gigantic reception and chants of “Opeth, Opeth” and “Marry me Mikey” (ok, that was me!! :P). A Lot of people were speculating as to what would be the opening song. To a lot of people’s delight, Opeth opened the show with ‘Heir Apparent’ from Watershed to which the Opethheads went mental and created complete mayhem in the front. At the end of the song, one of the stupid reps that continuously interrupted the show’s proceedings whispered something into Mikey’s ear and Mikey urged the crowd to stop pushing or else Opeth would exit the stage. The organizers as always acted like a bunch of dorks(confiscating cameras and camera phones, pushing people in the front so they’d get further sandwiched as they were already being pushed from behind, not to forget that they were constantly  blocking our view) but anyways, lets forget all the shenanigans that went on with the organizers. Back to the music-

The second song of the night was undoubtedly one of the most popular songs of the Ghost Reveries album – “The Grand Conjuration”. As soon as the opening riff of the song was played, the crowd knew they were in for a treat as it is a complete crowd puller. Not one of my favourites though as I find it to be one of the more mainstream and Nu-Metalish Opeth songs. They went onto play ‘Godhead’s Lament’ which was followed by ‘Night and The Silent Water’. By around this time everyone knew what was in store for us for the next one and a half hours as the set so far was really heavy and this was confirmed by Mikey who said, “This set is going to be one of the heaviest in a long time.” Night and the Silent Water was a bit of a surprise as it from ‘Morningrise’ and Opeth rarely plays anything from Morningrise nowadays. Moving on, they went onto play ‘Wreath’ followed by ‘The Lotus Eater’. Mike Akerfeldt started Lotus Eater with his trademark folk-like hum with giving him some backings on the keys which led into some heavy progressive metal riffing and death like vocals from Mikey.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, Opeth finally played one of their softer compositions from ‘Damnation’, ‘Hope Leaves’ which has some graceful guitar harmonies throughout the song  . I was astounded to see the crowd know all the lyrics of the song and they sang along, “in the corner…. Outside my window…” in chorus. I was hoping for more from Damnation for variety’s sake as I like their mellower stuff as much as their heavy stuff. Probably one of the best sounding and tightest songs of the night was ‘Deliverance’. Opeth regularly put in long intervals between their heavier and cleaner parts to tease the crowd. Mikey was at his jovial best throughout the show as he cracked a lot of jokes throughout. He narrated the course of the entire India experience so far and he said he caught bassist, Martin Mendez secretly having sex with a monkey, which made the crowd, laugh deliriously. Fredrik Akesson (guitarist) took over most of the leads, which is a little surprising as Mikey would play take most of the solos with Peter Lindgren on rhythm, before the inductipn of Akesson(ex-Arch Enemy) . Opeth played their first song from ‘Blackwater Park’, ‘Bleak’ for the night and I was hoping for many more from the same album. Mikey announced that the next track was going to be the last track of the night which brought everyone to shout “3 more, 4 more, 5 more, 6 more”. The supposed last song of the night was ‘Baying of the Hounds’ after which Mikey thanked the crowd and Opeth left the stage with the frenzied crowd, disappointed  as they wanted more of Opeth.

What was about to follow was shambolic to say the least with the vexing rep coming back on stage and announcing all the sponsors’ names and asking us if we wanted more of Opeth. When the crowd screamed “YES”, he said something so gay that will probably make George Michael want to change his sexual orientation. It went something along the lines of “if you want Opeth back, you have to scream- HOLD ME OPETH, GRAB ME OPETH, FEEL ME OPETH , LISTEN TO OPETH” or something ludicrous like that, I cant quite remember. The crowds were obviously getting agitated and restless and started shouting out enough expletives to use as their household weapons. What was about to proceed was even more humiliating for the sponsors, with Nokia calling Mikey on stage to do some jargon comedy skit with Mikey holding the new Nokia piece and playing an Opeth track from it. Obviously, ‘Coil’ wasn’t played due to some technical goof-ups which made everyone red-faced. Mikey in trademark Mikey style pretended as if he was getting a call from his wife to make up for what happened. “Just hold on, I’m getting a call from my wife………… (pretends to pick up phone) What??? You’re naked??? (Crowd- Woooh !! Yeaaaaaah!!!) You want me to play more songs for this brilliant crowd?? (crowd reaching orgasmic point by this time) Well ok……”

Opeth came back to grace the stage once again with their presence and went onto play ‘Demon of the fall’ which half the crowd was requesting for throughout the night. Again the track was one of the heavier Opeth numbers and it was fantastic to watch Martin ‘Axe’ Axerot (Blood Bath) completely lose his marbles on the drums who in my opinion is as good, if not better than Martin Lopez. Axe played some fantastic fills on this track and is definitely not afraid to experiment, bringing a different dimension to the new line-up. Only God could guess which was going to be the last track of the night. Opeth chose to play one of their more popular numbers ‘The Drapery Falls’ and the best part of the song was the acoustic passage ‘Spiral into’ part which had the whole crowd giving backup vocals , which broke into some heavy riffing and Axe pounding the double bass with all his might . The minute Opeth played the trippy outro of the track, the crowd knew that the night was unfortunately coming to a close.

SAARANG-THE ROCK SHOW (cant believe I’m calling it that) was one of the best nights of my life and it took me a long time to get over what I actually saw. Opeth are undoubtedly one of the best songwriters and more complex and diverse bands in the world right now. The crowd has to be one of the smartest and most knowledgeable crowds I have seen, as down south they all seem to know the entire Opeth discography along with the lyrics of the song. It was a little distressing to see that a massive band like Opeth was given virtually no coverage in the media as compared to the amount of press coverage Iron Maiden is receiving right now. Not even a mere mention by any of the leading portals in Mumbai which I’m sure is the case in other cities away from the South. All in all, the show ranks up with one of the best shows that I have ever seen. Opeth were in full form although it was a wee bit disappointing to see them play only one track from ‘Damnation’. When Mikey said that this was going to be the heaviest set ever, I expected more tracks from Blackwater Park (arguably their best album) but they only played a couple from the album. It would have been nice to see them play other tracks as well such as such as ‘Lepper Affinity’, ‘Burden’, ‘Fair Judgement’ but hey I’m not complaining. With their discography spanning more than a decade and songs being as long as the Nile, it’d take them at least the entire night if not even ‘Morningrise’ (pun firmly intended) to play all our favourites. To cap of the evening, the organizers arranged for an array of fireworks, which together with the echoing chants of “Opeth, Opeth,” conquered the Chennai sky. That moment barely a few minutes long, most definitely gave the young blood present a chill down their spines.

Opeth did have a few issues with their sound though. There were a few problems with the bass, drums and the monitors but apart from that every second, every riff, every solo, every keyboard passage, every beat was breathtakingly exhilarating. With the India set making it into Opeth’s history books as being ‘The Loudest set ever’ and the ‘Longest Set Ever’, we sure hope we can catch a glimpse of them again, in the not so distant future. Until then, all I can say is that On 25th January 2009, I did what many people wish to do at some point in their lives……………………. I saw GOD!! His name is Mikael Akerdfelt …..And that my friends is ‘A Fair Judgement’.