Opeth - Morningrise (2LP) - Half Speed Mastered Transparent Green Vinyl

Opeth’s second album arrived in 1996 via Candlelight Records, and it still feels like stepping into a misty Swedish morning where everything is quiet until the guitars erupt. Morningrise opens with Advent, a song that throws you into that classic Opeth push and pull. Harmonic twin-guitar runs, Mikael Åkerfeldt’s cavern-deep growl, then a sudden hush as the acoustic guitars take over. The songs breathe and sprawl here. There are only five of them, and every one stretches past the ten-minute mark, climaxing with Black Rose Immortal, a twenty-minute epic that winds through so many ideas you can get lost and love it.

This lineup is a big part of why Morningrise hits the way it does. Åkerfeldt and Peter Lindgren weave those intricate guitar lines like they’re finishing each other’s sentences, while Johan De Farfalla’s bass moves melodically rather than just holding the floor. Anders Nordin’s drumming has a light touch when it needs to, riding the cymbals in the quiet parts, then snapping into tight blasts and rolls when the storm hits. The whole thing was recorded at Dan Swanö’s Unisound studio in Örebro, and you can hear that particular mid-90s Swedish character. It’s roomy and a little ghostly. Swanö, known from Edge of Sanity, lets the acoustic passages glow without sanding off the teeth of the distorted sections. Morningrise doesn’t try to sound bigger than the room. It wants you inside the room.

The emotional core shows up early with The Night and the Silent Water, written in the shadow of a family loss. You can feel that weight in the way the melodies lean minor and the riffs lean long. It’s never morose for the sake of it. There’s fight in the crescendos, and the clean guitar breaks land like quiet conversations after the hospital lights dim. Then Nectar turns that melancholy into a more barbed and restless thing. It’s one of those songs where the band’s fascination with early prog, death metal, and even a bit of British metal melody all meet up and shake hands.

Everyone brings up Black Rose Immortal for good reason. It’s still Opeth’s longest studio track, and it’s the clearest map of where the band was heading. Themes appear and morph, then slip away before they overstay. There are moments that feel like a lost pastoral folk tune and others that could level a small club. The arrangement isn’t there to show how many riffs they can write. It’s built like a story with peaks and valleys, and it invites you to sit through the whole thing rather than skipping to a favorite part.

To Bid You Farewell, the closer, does the brave thing. No harsh vocals, just Åkerfeldt’s clean singing over layered acoustics and elegant electric leads. It’s patient, almost courtly, and it proves what fans would tell you for years afterward. Opeth never needed brute force to be heavy. The tension and release were always baked into the writing.

Morningrise has gathered a reputation over time as the most romantic of the early Opeth records, and that fits. Not sappy romance, more like the old Gothic kind where rivers, gardens, and candlelit rooms hold secrets. It feels a step darker and more ornate than Orchid, yet not as polished as what would arrive a few years later. That in-between space is the charm. You can hear a band still chasing the sound in its head and catching it more often than not.

On vinyl, the dynamics really stretch out. The quiet acoustic interludes bloom, and those dense guitar harmonies in Advent and Nectar separate just enough to appreciate the phrasing. If you spot Morningrise vinyl while crate digging, grab it, because it’s one of those albums that rewards front-to-back listening. Opeth vinyl tends to get flipped a lot in shops, but this one feels like a keeper, the kind of record you put on late and let the needle ride. Whether you’re browsing a Melbourne record store on a rainy afternoon or planning to buy Opeth records online, the pull of this album is strong. People often start with Blackwater Park, then circle back. Coming in through Morningrise is like entering the old house through the garden. You see where the stones were laid and why the paths twist like they do.

If you’re building a little corner of Opeth albums on vinyl, this sits near the roots, still damp with the soil of the Swedish underground. It’s a snapshot of a young band thinking big but playing with restraint where it counts. Classic, not because a list told you so, but because every return visit reveals one more shadow in the room.