Review by UnhinderedbyTalent for Opeth - Orchid (1995)

Opening your debut album with a fourteen-minute track takes balls.  If you fail to engage me as a music listener within the first few minutes of an album, then chances are you have lost me before you even really get going.  The human attention span is actually less than that of a goldfish someone told me recently so if eight seconds is my limit then fourteen minutes is a big ask.  Thankfully though, In Midst She Was Standing is an absolute triumph.  It is majestic and dark throughout its tenure at the start of the record, drawing you in to the rest of the album and now of course one of metals best known careers.  It manages to shift as a track almost effortlessly and without falling over its own feet at any point.  Espousing progressive leanings from the start, Orchid continues to wear these prog rock influences on its sleeve for the duration of what is a fine debut.  

At the same time though the album is steeped in a haunting density, with passages of weighty atmospherics leading into subtle changes of pace to resurrect the progressive elements of the sound without ever feeling clunky or bloated either.  There is an overall feeling of melancholy that never quite leaves the ether as the album works its way through each track.  This melancholia can be heard in the twang of the bass strings, or the harrowing melodies of the lead guitar and likewise they appear via piano keys also.  The only part of the instrumentation that feels sterile, even by these ethereal standards are the drums.  They feel a bit lost in proceedings and struggle to make their presence felt most of the time.  Oddly, this lack of oomph from behind the kit doesn't detract too much from the overall experience as there's enough going on to hold the interest anyways.

Akerfeldt's vocals range from the familiar rasping death metal style that he became famed for to the cleaner more diaphanous vocals of much of the bands later output.  There is an equal mix of riffage and picked acoustics from the guitars also which change pace from urgent and busy fluency to more melodic and mellifluous sections that strike clean notes that seem to fill the very air around them.  When in full flow though the band sound like a raging beast that always has surprising awareness of its surroundings at all times and controls itself immaculately well.