Steven Wilson and Mikael Åkerfeldt
Storm Corrosion is the brain child behind two amazing musicians Steven Wilson and Mikael Åkerfeldt, this long awaited collaboration couldn’t have been more hoped for from fans of Opeth and Porcupine Tree alike, the duo have worked together for a decade by Wilson producing the majority of Opeth’s albums and even writing some of their lyrics. Both bands are very close, I went to a Porcupine Tree concert around 2 years ago and there were more people wearing Opeth shirts than Porcupine Tree shirts, it was insane.
This first song ‘Drag Ropes‘ is a very strange song, but sets the foundation that we might be in for an extreme ride, well that can go unsaid when talking about these musicians. The song is very ambient however extremely progressive at the same time. It starts off with a slow ambient string piece, then it progresses to Åkerfeldt’s vocals, these vocals go perfectly with the ambient nature of the song and blends with the strings perfectly. These almost psychedelic synths comes in however used very sparingly and no way in the traditional manner, Wilson’s vocals soon arise and give a perfect harmony with Åkerfeldt. Piano’s start to come in and the song starts to build up a with a combination of string and woodwind instruments. It hits a peak and something really odd happens, from what I can tell Åkerfeldt has a mono-toned deep voice with Wilson’s vocals in a riff that makes up something I can not describe and have never heard anything alike it in my past, it builds up into a fantastic guitar riff with a choir behind it. The song keeps going with high synths and piano with a steady hi-hat groove to keep it going. Then it breaks back into the chorus…if you can call it that….this song is everything and more than what I expected it to be and makes me extremely impaintient for their debut album.
drummer149 