Nightly Emotion — Burden — Opeth
I know, I know. It’s yet another piece about Opeth. I’m working my way out of my comfort zone while simultaneously giving myself time to listen to other music to really give it a fair shake when I review it. I pre-ordered Ofte Jeg Drømmer Mig Død by Afsky. Sounded neat, but anyway, that’s not why I’m here tonight.
Tonight’s emotional outing is Burden by Opeth. I love Opeth so much as you no doubt know if you’ve been following me. Are you following me? What do you like?
I love sad sounding songs. I look at them in a different way. If you’re really so sad it means what you’ve lost was really important to you and you should get some solace from that. If you’re depressed about your situation it means you have plenty of room to dream. Enough of my unprofessional advice though.
This track is amazing. It starts out with some sad piano. Everyone can relate to the subject matter here. It can leave a heavy scar to have carried a burden in your past. Some burdens people carry their whole life.
This mellow ballad of a track has great bass work. It’s tasteful and accentuates where it should. The keyboards are amazing. You barely notice they are there unless you pay attention. They play some soft string synth, and some good old classic rock style organ licks. There’s a whole solo for the keys too. It really reminds me of rock from the 60s and 70s.
I love the backing acoustic track. If you like acoustic then Opeth is definitely your band and I would say check out the Damnation album. I really love a good vocal harmony. They really laid it down nicely on this track. Mikail and Fredrik trade solos back and forth and it doesn’t seem like a completion. They play the parts they play simply because it’s more of a shared experience the way they play over each other for the second or so between swaps. It ends up with them playing harmonies together.
Now, on to the lyrical analysis. I’ve said many times I’m not good at this kind of thing. I’ll do my best though. Here’s what we have:
I once upon a time carried a burden inside
I sung a last goodbye, a broken rhyme I’d underlined
There’s an ocean of sorrow in youSaw a movement in their eyes
Said, I no longer knew the way
Given up the ghost, a passive mind submit to fear
And the wait for redemption at handIf death should take me now
Count my mistakes and let me through
Whisper in my ear, you’ve taken more than we’ve received
And the ocean of sorrow is you
For a song that clocks in at over 6 minutes, there’s really not a lot to unpack. It’s sad, to say the least. I think it’s neat though that instead of showing that he’s sad Mikail recognizes the pain that others have around him. Throughout the song, there's recognition of that. The song seems to be waiting on the inevitable failures of life be it professional or just life fading in general.
Given up the ghost, a passive mind submit to fear
And the wait for redemption at hand
There’s a hint of fear that you won’t be able to redeem yourself from your mistakes. I can relate to that. I have a lot of regrets. I’ve learned not to take out my frustrations on people though. For most of my life, I’ve been starting fires and then lashing out at people who told me I was burning them. I think once you’ve lived a little you come to better understand things like this. I say this as I realize I could be completely wrong about the entire analysis. The thing is your burden, guilt or otherwise, can be something that awakens you into becoming a better person.
The song ends with an acoustic bit with 2 guitars. After this short movement, the acoustic bit is repeated and each time it’s repeated someone detunes a string on the guitar until it sounds quite out of tune and out of sorts. It’s kind of fitting considering the sad imagery of the song itself. Or, Maybe they were just having a bit of fun, and it’s some kind of musical joke. Either way, it is definitely interesting. I know that if I wasn’t hearing the right notes when I played I would have to stop. It’s pretty cool that someone can play through something like that.
As always I’ll leave the Spotify link below. Check out the song. This will be going up on my Twitter via a friend link, so if you stopped by after seeing it there thanks for coming. I’m going to try to keep this a regular thing. Thanks for all your love and support. Here’s the Spotify link:
Lyrics pulled from https://genius.com/20659699
Image pulled from (MetaLchesH, 2011)
