Cookie monster vocals

Its time to deal with the thorny issue that even now causes division in the metal community, especially between older and younger fans. That issue is cookie monster vocals. I’ve heard it described all number of ways but I think cookie monster vocals sums it up perfectly. We all know what the cookie monster sounds like. I used to hate those kind of vocals. Couldn’t see the point, couldn’t see any value and it was preventing me getting into a whole swathe of bands.

But a few years back I got into Porcupine Tree…who to be honest deserve half an hour to themselves, due to the genius who is Steven Wilson, their main man. I started to read up on the Porcupine Tree and discovered Steven Wilson had produced and performed with Opeth, a band hitherto closed to me because I thought they were a cookie monster band. I read that the singer and main man in Opeth, Mikael Akerfeldt, who turned out to be another genius - what are the odds - alternates between cookie monster and clean vocals. This sounded hopeful.

I went and downloaded a few tracks – and I make no excuse about downloading tracks because it’s a great way of getting to know stuff and then you go out and buy the CDs. I guess I’m old-fashioned in that regard, I like to buy CDs, I like to feel a CD in my hand, I like to flick through the inserts…even though the writing seems to be getting smaller and smaller as I get older and older…wonder what that’s all about.  As luck would have it, the first track I ever listened to by Opeth was the 13 minutes of unbridled awesome magnificence that is “Deliverance”. As I’ve just used the word awesome again – for the second and last time today - I think you get the idea of just how awesome the track Deliverance is…doh!

Suddenly, another door had opened.

I cannot impress upon you enough how important it is – if we assume that metal has any importance at all…and oh my laws we do – that you listen to the Deliverance album by Opeth. Not only will you be able to savour the wonders of the afore-mentioned title track but the rest of the album is incredible. As indeed are all of their other albums. Ghost Reveries is as good a metal album as there could be. Light and shade, cookie monster and clean vocals, gentle, ethereal, evocative and bone-crunching, mind-blowing, shattering music.
In fact just thinking about them let me make a bold assertion. In my estimation Opeth are/have been the best metal band in the world for the past ten years.

If you take nothing else away from this blog, if you go away and discover Opeth for yourself anything I've written will have been worth it. Opeth encapsulate all that has been good about metal in the last 40 years whilst simultaneously leading the way into the next 40. I mentioned another time about how you couldn’t imagine how the world existed without certain songs and certain bands. There are a number of Opeth tracks that sound as if they were created by the Gods.

Jeez, I’m getting evangelical now.

But listen to Deliverance, listen to The Grand Conjuration, listen to Blackwater Park, listen to The Leper Affinity…heavens to Betsy there is just nothing finer.