OpethDyssidia were a cohesive choice to support Opeth.
Their use of keys is synonymous with the band they’re supporting, and having looked at the support acts in other states it can be said that Dyssidia could possibly have been the best match for Opeth on this entire national tour. The band commanded the stage, thriving in the positive conditions and groovier sound system. As they played through their long and technical compositions, the crowd was split between absorbed and causing an absolute ruckus in the mosh pit, a theme that would continue through the night. With a commanding vocal range Mitch Brackman led the ebb and flow of Dyssidia’s anthems as Corey Davis and Neil Palmer consistently defied the onlooking eyes of the punters with their technical prowess. Just watching them play, their movements across their respective fret boards proved “insatiably” difficult, while their drummer Liam Weedall is cruising through the physically challenging set with visible ease. No stranger to songs of up to 12 minutes in length, there’s a refreshing level of diversity within Dyssidia’s music. They left the stage to avid cheers from the sold-out crowd.
Opeth themselves were a beacon of holy rock’n’roll mastery, their church the stage, their instruments the altar. The way the Opeth sound has progressed from brutal death metal to ‘70s-style prog rock over their 25 years of existence allows for a crazily diverse range of songs to be put together in the live context, with tunes played off of Morningrise, Deliverance and My Arms, Your Hearse. The band are bodacious on stage, oozing a stage presence so eerily yet satisfyingly similar to that of Black Sabbath, while their guitar sounds are penetrating yet all-encompassing at the same time. Cheeky Mikael Akerfeldt can’t resist some on-stage banter, explaining the band is jetlagged and are going to fix this by rocking and fucking. The set list is truly career-spanning and there’s something for fans of everything, though for how proud Opeth are of Pale Communion it was minimally represented in concert. Windowpane and Deliverance are clear standouts for the evening and this show can surely boast the most raucous mosh pit in Adelaide for all of 2015 so far, with bodies careening into each other and surfing over the crowd in glee.
