Live Review : Opeth + Grand Magus @ Albert Hall, Manchester on March 1st 2025

There are shows where the venue plays an integral part in the beauty of the endeavour. It becomes an additional member of the band, adding to the ambience and the majestic nature of the performance. Tonight is one just instance. The Albert Hall is the jewel in Manchester's proliferation of venues. An abandoned Wesleyan Chapel, it had stood dormant for 40 years until it was rescued last decade and restored as a multi-purpose auditorium. It is a fantastic space, surrounded by large ornate stained-glass windows and dominated by an imposing organ. It provides the perfect setting for Opeth’s extraordinarily unique take on metal. There are some compromises to be made, Mikael Åkerfeldt recounts a Spinal Tap moment when they realised that the video screens that had been a focal point of the other shows on this tour were too big to fit and had to be left in the van, but all in all the Albert Hall provides an immaculate canvas for Opeth to unfurl their magic.

If there are still dissenters who believe that Opeth have wandered too far from the central core of metal, then the inclusion of Grand Magus certainly provides an ironclad olive branch. They have kept the faith of true metal for nearly thirty years and they tap into that primordial roar of three musicians playing loud raucous music. It is stunningly simple but also gloriously anthemic. We get just eight tracks to illustrate an expansive and illustrious ten album career, but each song is a majestic chest-beating masterpiece that bores down to the very reason that metal has captured all our souls. ‘Steel Versus Steel’ and ‘Ravens Guide Our Way’ soar in technicolour glory. There is no post-modern irony at play here, these are authentically muscular odes to daring exploits and a long-faded world.

The beauty is in the way that the songs are crafted. You don’t survive four decades of doing this for a living without realising that stripped-back emotive music grabs an audience. Each track, no matter whether it is from last year’s “Sunraven” or all the way back to 2008’s “Iron Will”, conveys the emotion of trials against adversity and the organic resplendent nature of pounding bass and guttural guitar. It is spellbindingly communal and even though they are the bridesmaid as opposed to the bride; they wheedle their way into the audience’s consciousness. Janne Christoffersson declares that they require participation to fuel their performance and two thousand odd voices are duly offered. 

It reaches a crescendo with ‘Hammer Of The North’, the closest Grand Magus have to a signature tune. By this point, nobody is left in the hall that their grandiose grandeur hasn’t swept along.  This is pure metal distilled into six minutes of fist-pumping extravagance. The central riff is shorn back and minimal but it is enriched with kinetic power that flows through its whole being. The room becomes one as everybody present roars back its eminently catchy chorus. Even as the track flourishes to a conclusion and the band takes their bows, the collective massive still insist on repeating back on the loop the “whoo-hoo-hoo” refrain that sits at the heart of the song. Janne, Mats and Ludwig have no other option than to stand there and let the adulation wash over them. An astonishing finale to an astonishing set. 

Opeth transcend all of metal’s self-imposed barriers and divisions. Since their inception back in 1992 they have steadfastly ignored the rigours and restrictions within our music and created something that simultaneously exists outside of metal but also consistently within it. Even in their formative years as a death metal act, they were doing something fundamentally different with the genre, bringing textures, light and shade that it didn’t know it was missing. This is illustrated this evening when ‘The Night And The Silent Water’  from their second album returns to the set after a sixteen-year absence. It proves beyond doubt that there wasn’t a point where Opeth wasn’t pushing the envelope of innovation, straining metals confides in a ticker-tape parade of creativity.

It is just one highlight in two hours and ten minutes of majestic wonder. Opeth sit on a unique pedestal of creating metal that bypasses the pent-up repression inherent in our music and talks to the soul. Every track aired sits within its own distinct musical ecosystem, meandering vessels of aural splendour that titillate the senses. Whilst everything played comes from the same band (aside from the humorous Napalm Death cover), and even in some cases the same album, every song feels divergent in its originality and creativity. Opeth’s superpower is to create an open world musical universe where they never repeat themselves but still manage to sound intrinsically the same band. We keep saying that there is only a finite number of notes yet Opeth manage to continually find different and thoroughly unsurpassable things to do with them.

If their innate ability to journey into musical pastures invisible to others wasn't enough, the other thing that makes them so special is the grounded self-deprecating demeanour of Mikael Åkerfeldt. He has an affable relaxed nature that feels at odds with the rampant egotism that runs through metal. He is charismatically funny, recounting tales of meeting a disarmingly young Chicago at an airport, getting a record store in Glasgow to open especially for him on a Sunday and how the amount of people willing to come to see them in Manchester has ebbed and flowed over the years. He even attempts to cover ‘Wonderwall’ to mark the fact that they are in the musical Mancunian mecca but are dissuaded by the boo’s that bellow forth from a distinctly anti Oasis crowd. Instead, we get ‘You Suffer’, but with the words changed to ‘Wonderwall’. It is that authentic level of improvised candour that makes every Opeth gig feel special. Whilst the setlist for a tour may not waver, you know that Mikael’s stream-of-consciousness observations will be never to be repeated utterances.

With such a diverse and at times polarising back catalogue to mine, Opeth sets can go in an infinite number of directions. This evening is markedly more mellow and introspective than what we experienced at Bloodstock last year. Whilst setlist mainstays such as ‘Ghost Perdition’ and ‘In My Time Of Need’ remain, the inclusion of four tracks from last year’s quite extraordinary “The Last Will and Testament” gives the show a completely different feel and inclination. The impressive oval balcony is full as punters choose to sit and let the waves of music wash over them.  

In fact a Metal audience’s long held interactive and physical reaction to the music only really kicks in when we arrive at the final track. Mikael describes ‘Deliverance’ as their ‘Paranoid’, a 14-minute long ‘Paranoid’ with numerous time signature shifts and distinct musical passages, but still their ‘Paranoid’. He labours the point by teasing us with the opening bars of ‘Paranoid’ before hurtling into the track in question. An audience that has spent two hours sitting and standing in stoic reverence now suddenly springs to life. A pit opens up on the floor and the bar staff, usually used to much more apathetic indie shows, watch in open-mouthed wonder as a cacophony of bodies spin around in euphoric ecstasy. On the balconies, the synchronised headbanging breaks out. It is like ‘Deliverance’ has allowed the restrained ecstatic adulation of the last hundred and 20 minutes to finally earth itself and find a manifestation.

It provides an extraordinarily raucous finale to an extraordinarily beautiful and all-consuming show. Opeth provide a breathtaking and cinematic take on a music that sometimes doesn't get nuance or emotional depth. Opeth have managed to find the soul at the heart of metal. By inhabiting its byways with an intricate nature, they have unearthed its emotional core. A life affirming evening in an amazing setting that shows once again the evolutionary wonder of our music. 

Check the “In The Flesh” page for more photos!
Opeth + Grand Magus