Pale Communion

Musical style

Mikael Åkerfeldt said of the album, "I wanted to do something more melodic with this album, so there's stronger vocal melodies and more melodies overall for this album." Greg Kennelty of Metal Injection said the album does not contain "growls or death metal vocals". He also described the album as "the missing link between Damnation and Ghost Reveries or if Heritage was written directly after Ghost Reveries without Watershed having ever existed".

AllMusic's Thom Jurek has compared the album to Deep Purple's In Rock and King Crimson's early music, as well as noting the influence from jazz fusion.

Artwork

The cover art was designed by Travis Smith, who has designed several previous Opeth album covers. The artwork contains Latin text. The left panel quotes Axel Oxenstierna: "Don't you know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed?" (An nesci, mi fili, quantilla prudentia mundus regatur?). The middle panel quotes Terence: "In these days friends are won through flattery, the truth gives birth to hate." (Hoc tempore obsequium amicos, veritas odium parit, Andria, vv. 67-68). The right panel quotes Marcus Valerius Martialis: "He grieves truly who grieves without a witness." (Ille dolet vere qui sine teste dolet, Epigrammata, I, 33).

Reception

Pale Communion was met with positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic (a review aggregator site which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 from music critics), based on 12 critics, the album has received a score of 75/100, which indicates "generally favorable" reviews.

Writing for The Guardian, Dom Lawson gave the album a perfect rating, giving particular praise to Mikael Åkerfeldt's singing, writing that "his ability to tug at heartstrings while singing the most wilfully hazy of lyrics is matched only by these songs' beautiful arrangements and pin-sharp ensemble playing." He singled out the closing track for particular praise, describing it as "at once the most profoundly moving song Åkerfeldt has ever written, and a tantalising glimpse into one possible future for this peerless band."

Pitchfork's Grayson Currin wrote considerably more critically about the album. "Pale Communion, Opeth's first album in three years, lacks the absolute willpower and prevailing ambition of the band’s best work—that is, the core that made the awkwardness sufferable." Grayson concluded his review by writing, "Even if you couldn’t abide the inflexibility of their methodical grandeur, it was hard to condemn the immense effort and imagination involved. But Pale Communion only toys with the building blocks, revealing influences that were already apparent but refusing to invigorate them alongside each other. It's not that Opeth isn't cool here. It's that these eight songs run cold on new energies and ideas, a rarity for a catalog custom-made to overwhelm."

Track listing

All tracks written by Mikael Åkerfeldt.