The Last Will and Testament

The Last Will and Testament is the fourteenth studio album by the Swedish band Opeth. It was originally set for 11 October 2024 through Reigning Phoenix Music and pushed back to 22 November by manufacturing delays. It is their first studio album since In Cauda Venenum of 2019 and the first with drummer Waltteri Vayrynen, who officially replaced Martin Axenrot in 2022 after his departure the year before. It also marks the return of death metal elements, death growls among them, unused since Watershed in 2008. Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull appears on five tracks, contributing flute and spoken word. It is a concept album set after the First World War, telling the story of a wealthy, conservative patriarch whose last will and testament reveals shocking family secrets. Seven of the eight songs consist of the reading of that will in the presence of his three children -- twins, a son and a daughter in their twenties, and a young girl with polio. The father first confesses that the young girl is not related to the twins by blood. The songs are numbered as sections, from "§1" to "§7", and only the last piece carries a title of its own, "A Story Never Told". The order here is the eight tracks of the European CD, Moderbolaget Records 1.0155; the album also appeared as a CD with Blu-ray digipak, a box set, a cassette and a double LP.