Orchid (album) - Musical Style and Lyrical Themes

Musical Style and Lyrical Themes

The music in Orchid combines elements influenced by progressive rock and acoustics pieces of folk music to the black metal scream and the death metal growl, as well having clean vocals. It also contains influences from jazz and melodic passages played by a piano and acoustic guitars. Opeth sounded much different than the casual black or death metal bands at that time and it's the closest album that the band came to the black genre. Orchid is the album that best represented the Opeth's diverse influences and it is the rawest, according to Rocknworld. Critics described the sound of the album as it being "unique". Jim Raggi wrote "If you're wanting the more deathy and song oriented Opeth, skip down to My Arms Your Hearse and go from there. If you're looking for a unique journey of music built alternately around dual guitar harmonies knocking into sequences when the two guitars and the bass are all playing different parts, stop-start transitions at times and smooth here-to-theres at others, here you go." Matt Smith stated that "with Orchid, the band introduced its blend of intricate, down-tempo acoustic guitar and piano lines and swinging, Celtic-sounding, distorted rhythms."

Most songs of the album exceeds nine minutes, but there are two instrumental songs of short duration. These two instrumental songs are "Silhouette" and "Requiem". The first song was recorded just hours before they were leaving the studio and is a brief piano interlude. They were impressed that Anders Nordin played the piano very well. Lindgren said, "I remember the look on Dan's face when we said, 'Our drummer can play the piano.' He didn't believe a word we were saying. Dan can play the piano. Most guys play like shit. When Anders started playing, Dan was actually impressed." Åkerfeldt later said, "I'm still quite impressed." The other instrumental is an acoustic epic, according to Lindgren. Åkerfeldt borrowed a Spanish acoustic guitar called a Trameleuc from a guitar store to play the song.

After the members left Opeth, Mikael Åkerfeldt and David Isberg began to write the songs. Åkerfeldt commented about: "As you might understand I was more or less influenced by the occult back then, although in no serious manner. Music wise I was really into the twisted, dark, and evil-sounding riffs. The lyrics written by both me and David were pure Satanic chantings!" According to Åkerfeldt, "the idea for Opeth was for it to be evil—satanic lyrics and evil riffs. I chose my notes so they sounded evil." The first two songs that Åkerfeldt and Isberg wrote were "Requiem of Lost Souls" and "Mystique of the Baphomet" (later "Mark of the Damned" and later "Forest of October"). When Isberg quit the band, Åkerfeldt and Peter Lindgren "really felt that we had found a real original way of playing. There were at the time almost no other band using that many harmonies as we did." "Forest of October" "is the best song on the album", according to Lindgren. Åkerfeldt says he doesn't remember what it is about, and that he only remembers that he wrote the lyrics to sound like the music.

Åkerfeldt said that "The Twilight Is My Robe" used to be called "Oath" and "is a satanic song. Like an oath to Satan." He also said that one part of the song is "a complete rip-off" of Scorpions' "Fly to the Rainbow". The most evil song on the album, said Lindgren, the lyrics for "Under the Weeping Moon" were "some kind of satanic worship of the moon. It doesn't really deal with anything", according to Åkerfeldt. He also complimented the melody of "The Apostle in Triumph" and considered it to be lyrically "a combination of nature and satanic worship". The longest song of the album, "In Mist She Was Standing", was the last song completed. The song is about a nightmare, and is inspired by the film Lady in Black.

The bonus track, "Into the Frost of Winter", is an early recording of the band during a 1992 rehearsal. The song contains some segments which were later reworked into "Advent", the opening track on their second album Morningrise.