russell - https://www.invisibleoranges.com/opeth-bembe/
2025-10-25 05:43:22
Good stuff. You wouldn't think it of a metalhead like me, but bembe is close to my heart as well. Opeth, the band that I got some of ObWi hooked on a while back, was notable for being a Swedish metal band with a latin rhythm section. Both the drummer, Martin Lopez, and the bassists Martin Mendez, were Uruguayan. (Well, Lopez was born in Sweden to Uruguayan parents, and lived there for a time. Mendez emigrated to Sweden when he was 17.) All of the 6/8 feel stuff that Opeth plays starting on My Arms, Your Hearse through Ghost Reveries were given pulse by Lopez and Mendez playing bembe influenced heavy rhythms to the point where even after Lopez left the group, Mikael Åkerfeldt, the main songwriter, was still writing Afro-Caribbean inflected rhythmic sections. He even had Alex Acuña play percussion on one song on the album they did right after Lopez left the band.
Bembe is what gives Opeth's brutal passages that groove that few other metal bands can find. Sepultura and Gojira get it, but Sepultura is Brazillan and Gojira are French eco-activists who do tons of work in the Amazon basin and that has bled over into Mario's drumming.
And here's Sepultura in their full Afro Caribbean mode back in 1996:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YUJit9iNE0
russell - https://www.invisibleoranges.com/opeth-bembe/
Good stuff. You wouldn't think it of a metalhead like me, but bembe is close to my heart as well. Opeth, the band that I got some of ObWi hooked on a while back, was notable for being a Swedish metal band with a latin rhythm section. Both the drummer, Martin Lopez, and the bassists Martin Mendez, were Uruguayan. (Well, Lopez was born in Sweden to Uruguayan parents, and lived there for a time. Mendez emigrated to Sweden when he was 17.) All of the 6/8 feel stuff that Opeth plays starting on My Arms, Your Hearse through Ghost Reveries were given pulse by Lopez and Mendez playing bembe influenced heavy rhythms to the point where even after Lopez left the group, Mikael Åkerfeldt, the main songwriter, was still writing Afro-Caribbean inflected rhythmic sections. He even had Alex Acuña play percussion on one song on the album they did right after Lopez left the band.
Bembe is what gives Opeth's brutal passages that groove that few other metal bands can find. Sepultura and Gojira get it, but Sepultura is Brazillan and Gojira are French eco-activists who do tons of work in the Amazon basin and that has bled over into Mario's drumming.