“Shadow of an Angel,” off Best Creation, the new album by Opus (aka Christian Lawrence), begins with a cascade of notes from an acoustic guitar, picked with precision, grace — and heaviness. The same kind of weight suffuses the vocal that comes in first on a breath and fills out with tone to carry the first line of lyrics.
“I don’t understand,” Opus sings. “I’m so confused / Help me win this war / Because I don’t want to lose.” Low strings add even more depth to the song. It all screams one thing: metal. Except that the heavily distorted guitars, the pounding drums, the grinding bass, never arrive. It’s just Opus’s rich voice, the guitar, and the strings. And it’s all heavy enough.
It’s not surprising that the New Haven-based Opus knows his way around metal. He’s the drummer in Dead By Wednesday, and tours with that band and a few other projects relentlessly as musician and techie. The sound of metal has been filling his head for decades. So it makes sense that he could transfer that sensibility to acoustic instruments. What’s remarkable about Best Creation is the way Opus translates that heaviness to us, using this stripped-back musical landscape.
“Shadow of an Angel” is, in fact, one of Best Creation’s more fleshed-out numbers. “Down” reduces the backing strings to a single note, and the only percussion is a shaker. The voice and guitars do all the work. Similarly, “Jess” is just vocals, guitars, and a tambourine.
In a delightful little joke that also serves as a proof of concept, Opus closes the album with “Itsy Bitsy,” which is — you guessed it — a version of “Itsy Bitsy Spider.” Even that is actually pretty heavy.
Best Creation thus poses an interesting musical question. What makes music heavy? How much is the lyrics? How much is the sound of the voices and instruments themselves? How much of it is sheer volume? How much of it is attitude and emotion? Opus’s solo album suggests that a whole lot of it is the final element on that list, which for prospective metal musicians is both terrifying and liberating. The sound of metal is forever married to electric guitars, big bass, and drums, of course. But if you don’t really feel it, all the distortion and the biggest stack of amps in the world won’t help you. On the other hand, if it’s in you already and if you know what you’re doing, all you need is your voice and an acoustic guitar, and you can plumb the depths.
