Concert Review - Opeth - Auckland - 14th November 2025
Presented By Metropolis Touring
Review By: Mark Derricutt
Artist/Band: Opeth with special guests Pull Down The Sun
Venue/City: The Trusts Arena, Auckland, New Zealand
Date of Event: Friday, 14th November 2025
I was first introduced to Opeth around the release of 1998’s groundbreaking album My Arms, Your Hearse, a blend of death and progressive metal that piqued my curiosity and led me to become a lifelong fan. The album marked a solidification of the band’s position in the metal scene, and I think it’s where they hit their stride, especially with Demon of the Fall – a fan favourite and regular encore track.
Over the years, the band’s sound has ebbed and flowed between the balance of progressive and death metal, leaning further and further towards progressive metal in more recent years. 2019’s divisive release In Cauda Venenum featured almost no death metal at all. 2024’s The Last Will And Testament is a redemption of sorts – a return of Mikael Åkerfeldt’s distinctive growls, yet full of clean progressive elements perfectly balanced.
As I wait for the show to start, I reflect on the previous times I have seen the band: 2017 for their Sorceress tour at The Powerstation, and my first show some 11 years prior at the St James on their 2006 Ghost Reveries tour. My lasting memory of those shows was just how still everything felt (on stage at least); absolute concentration on the music and performance seemed in conflict with the ferocity of the band’s sound. Each time, I found myself stuck in a reverie for most of the show, leaving me with mixed feelings – connected yet disconnected – that lingered with me far more than most other shows.
First up, however, we have local familiarity with Pull Down The Sun. The audience is filling the arena as the band hits the stage for a solid eight-track set, the three-piece from Whanganui looking tiny as they spread out over the stage. If you’ve ever seen PDTS before, you’ll know full well the sound they unleashed more than made up for their small demeanour.
As we wait for Opeth, the soundtrack to 1973’s The Devil in Miss Jones provides a bleak, sombre prelude as the audience gears itself up, ready for tonight’s show. I’d love to say the pit was restless, but with a 90% seated show, it felt surreal to see everyone so still and cordial.
We may not have had growls for a while, but it’s as if they never left Mikael’s repertoire. Cleans and guttural rasps weave between a dark, brooding wave of red light, stabbed with an impressive backdrop of imagery and lights. The tone lowers now for To Rid The Disease from the Damnation album. If ever a song was to be described as haunting, then this fits the bill, a melancholic keyboard-laden non-distorted tune, complete with clean background vocals. Speaking of tone, we now down-tune to The Grand Conjuration, a macabre seance to forces beyond. Percussive fills from Joakim Svalberg add an interesting addition I had previously missed when listening.
The ease with which the band flip-flop between chaotic death metal, clean melodies, and a plethora of discordant passages remains as constant as they were when I first saw them, only now some 20 years later, and 20 years grown, despite lineup changes.
Over the course of the evening’s 13 songs, the seated audience remained an oddity of the night, until the final song, Ghost of Perdition, instantly ha the crowd burst forth to form a melee in the front row – although with Deliverance still to come as an encore, this is likely the pit in mild mode.
I left the venue sated. Here’s hoping we don’t wait another eight years for Opeth to return to New Zealand’s shores.
Setlist - Pull Down the Sun
Ako
Whare Rā
Of Rivers and Glaciers
Weta
Kēhua
Pierce the Sea
Of Valleys and Mountains
Inoi
Setlist - Opeth
§1
Master’s Apprentices
The Leper Affinity
§7
The Devil’s Orchard
To Rid the Disease
The Grand Conjuration
§3
Demon of the Fall
Ghost of Perdition
Encore
Deliverance
