Live music, I think, is one of life's great pleasures. I've touched on this idea before, in a previous SPS, talking about Joe Satriani's excellent 'Crowd Chant'. The music connects on a visceral level that you can't find anywhere else, and there's obviously something deeply hard-wired in our brains that lights up when we're a part of a crowd. Having said all that, let's talk about a band I've never actually seen live: Opeth. Wikipedia calls them a Swedish Progressive Death Metal band, and without delving too deeply into the obscure and esoteric world of heavy metal nomenclature, that's pretty accurate, though they've been trending more towards the Progressive than the Death in the last few years. They're incredibly inventive and utterly brilliant, and the above song, an acoustic version of 'Demon the Fall', might be the best example of that.
The original version of 'Demon' is an entirely different beast, and I've included it in the Spotify playlist at the bottom of the article - have a listen, though be warned it's everything you've always feared metal to be. Rough vocals, heavy distortion, drums that simply do not relent; it's all there. That said, you can start to see this acoustic version breaking through, especially at the end, when vocalist and lead guitarist Mikael Åkerfeldt drops the metal growl and opts instead to use his surprisingly beautiful singing voice. Opeth can dance with the heaviest of the heavy, but they've always had a softer side as well - Damnation, their 2003 album immediately comes to mind. That's all to say that this acoustic cover, while a great song, is not necessarily a huge surprise. Rather, it's something well within Opeth's comfort zone. Nonetheless, as Åkerfeldt mentions at the start of the video, it's something they've never done before. There's a chance the wheels could completely fall off, and that makes it feel like a treat.
That's part of the thrill of live music too. There's this feeling that you're seeing something special, something you'd miss if you weren't at this exact place at this exact time. Live covers, acoustic reworkings, deep cuts dragged from a band's back catalogue; all of these are unique moments specific to concerts that give the attendees the sense they're a part of something unique. Years later, it lets you say "I swear I was there". I've gotten into many arguments about this, and I'm not going to delve too deeply into artistic theory here, but I've always believed that art, at its core, is NOT timeless. Everything exists at a single moment, the intersection of what it is with when it was made, and it's within that moment that it is truly, profoundly meaningful. A concert then, and a special moment like the one above, represents the perfect expression of that. It's over in a flash, but for that single transcendent moment it is something truly special.
But here's the problem: None of that is true. As much as I'd like to preach about transcendent moments and once-in-a-lifetime experiences, I wasn't in Islington on November 16th, 2012. I didn't attend that show at Union Chapel, and I didn't see this song live. Rather, I'm watching a recording, a surreptitiously shot cell phone video, and I'm doing it nearly three years after the fact. Åkerfeldt even alludes to this in his opening; "Chances are it's gonna be complete fucking shit. Then again if you're not here tonight you're not gonna hear it - Oh! Internet". And that is simply the way things are now. Singular moments, unrepeatable and by their very nature transient, are very nearly impossible. Everyone's got an excellent recording device in their pocket, and the means to show that recording to the entire world.
This is the point where I rage against the modern machine. I grab my Luddite-approved torch and pitchfork and preach the end of technology. I gnash my teeth and tear my clothes and claim that social media is ruining music. And don't get me wrong, part of me wants to do that. But the simple truth of the matter is without technology I would never have seen this cover, which might be my favorite Opeth performance of all time. I can't be too mad about that. Even beyond that, there's a simple truth here. The experience might no longer be quite so singular, but for the 900 people who saw this show live, it was a moment unlike anything else. They felt something truly special, that they were a part of something unique in the band's history. Me watching a video on YouTube can't change that. And if it allows me to feel even the tiniest bit of the magic they felt, isn't that worth pursuing?
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