Ghost Opus Eponymous

By all rights, one would expect a band that hails from a heavy metal hotbed like Sweden, signs with a British heavy metal label, and pens songs steeped in Satanic liturgy, then performs them in frightful disguises while maintaining secret identities, to be a heavy metal band. But Ghost's 2010 debut album, Opus Eponymous, confounds such expectations by rating no higher than a three or four out of ten on a third millennium scale of metallic heaviosity, if you catch the meaning. In other words, although its songs are rife with heavy metal's favorite subject matter and unmistakably menacing brand of staccato guitar riffing, the restraint of their attack, not to mention their production (no overdriven amplifiers are to be found here), hark back to what passed for a metallic aesthetic during the very early '80s, or even before. What's more, striking tunes like "Ritual," "Stand by Him," and the especially spectacular "Satan Prayer" boast choruses so musical (not shouted, grunted, or shrieked,