Brad McConahay

Can somebody please “de-growl” Opeth?

I’m tempted to de-growl the Ghost Reveries album. Granted, I love this album more than any other in many years, but that infernal Cookie Monster Death Metal growl is spotted all over it. Somebody should pop open a copy of Soundforge and delete the growly stuff. Honestly, I’d do it, but I don’t care enough at this point. The killer progressive parts and its wide dynamic range in general more than make up for it. I’ve become accustomed to it enough that I just growl along with it now. Still, I’d be curious to hear it without the growling.

For instance, let’s take “Beneath the Mire”, one of my favorites. The very beginning feels an awful lot like something off of Dream Theater’s Awake album, and we’re okay up to around 1:40. Then the growling begins, and the music becomes mindless and boringly brutish. So we take out from 1:40 to 2:20. Not bad, only 40 seconds.

Along about 3:24 we start into what I consider to be one of the most beautiful passages of prog I’ve ever heard. The groovy bell of the ride cymbal on the offbeat. The haunting vocals. The cool phrasing of the lead when it kicks in. All fairly subtle in prog terms, but it really hits me. Oy … 5:00 brings the growl. Actually, it’s just a brief gutteral thing, no words, and it kinda works. It can stay. I guess 6:06 to 6:20 is the only other part that really needs to be cut. Only 54 seconds of the song actually need to go. That hardly seems worth the effort, but it could be enough to draw in listeners who might not otherwise put up with it at all.

I’m sure Mikael Ã…kerfeldt would hate this idea given the way he mentions that they’ll never do anything like the shockingly mellow Damnation album again. (a pretty great album in its own right) He seems pretty steadfast about retaining his Death Metal roots. Such a shame. C’mon, how about a nice compromise? … Ghost Reveries minus the growl!

Anyway, I wonder how badly Martin Lopez’s recent departure will affect their next album. His drums are a big part of what draws me to Opeth. It’s an awful tall order to replace a prog drummer and retain the feel that makes the music great.

Speaking of which, I wonder if the new project with Ã…kerfeldt, Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree), and Mike Portnoy (Dream Theater) will be a worthy supergroup project. Most of the prog supergroups I’ve heard over the last 10 years don’t do much for me. Seems hard to go wrong with those three, though. We shall see.

In the wave of the media blitz for the movie release of The Da Vinci Code, I finally decided to buy the book. It’s rare that I read fiction, so it never really occurred to me to buy the book, even during its own media frenzy. And “mystery” is certainly not a category I would go out of my way to read.

I figured nothing could live up to the reputation and mystique that has been built up around this bestseller, but I was wrong. It’s been hard putting it down. I tore through half of it in about three hours, which is scarily quick for me. It usually takes me forever to plow through a novel because it feels like such a task. I usually have a hard time concentrating on fiction.

It’s a shame the movie is getting such bad reviews, but it has been kind of cool seeing some of the images from the book in the previews. Like Silas’ cilice, and the cryptex. I noticed one reviewer on CNN who, when asked if he had read the book, said no. Another reviewer said she didn’t think the movie had enough character development or humor. Wtf? Humor? Like, Schwarzenegger style one liners? “Ahll be back… for da grail!”

Anyway, here’s hoping the second half of the book is as good as the first. I’m pretty impressed so far.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Happened to run across this picture we snapped over the summer and thought this might be a good place to put it. We paused the DVR right before final jeopardy, and this is what was on still.

Never thought I’d snap a picture of the TV for any reason, but this seemed at least a little worthy.

Is this funny at all? I’m just not sure…