Orchid was recorded during March and April 1994 in Finspang, where the old Unisound studio was located. Opeth moved from Stockholm to Finspang, where Dan Swano had rented an apartment for them. The studio was located in the cellar of a small house situated in the middle of a field. The album was produced and mixed by Swano and the band, and engineered by Swano. For the recording they had asked Johan DeFarfalla to play session bass guitar. He eventually became a full-time member.
Despite the nervousness of the band members, the recording sessions ran smoothly. “We were so ready before we went into the studio, we'd been rehearsing six or seven times a week, and we'd even been rehearsing in pitch black darkness in order to play the songs perfectly without even looking”, Akerfeldt recollected in 2009, speaking to Kerrang! However, the band regretted not having enough time to record the acoustic piece “Requiem”. The song was first recorded at Unisound, but the band was unhappy with the result. “Requiem” was then recorded in a studio in Stockholm with Pontus Norgren acting as co-producer.
Review
Opeth's debut, Orchid, was quite an audacious release, a far-beyond-epic
prog/death monstrosity exuding equal parts beauty and brutality – an album so
brilliant, so navel-gazingly pretentious that, in retrospect, Opeth's future
greatness was a foregone conclusion. Fact is, these Swedes – with the opening
cut, “In Mist She Was Standing,” exceeding the 14-minute mark – laid
their cards on the table at the beginning of the hand and still took the pot, so
ambitious and convincing is the band's artistic vision. And while the record
finds the group searching for the razor-sharp focus and prominent emotional hook
put forth on the later, classic releases My Arms, Your Hearse, Still Life, and
Blackwater Park, Orchid is still an exhilarating listen, with the band meshing
double-time death tempos with bleak, frostbitten riffs and moodily expansive,
jazz-influenced, melodic instrumental passages sporting an abundance of delicate
acoustic guitars and pianos. Mastermind Mikael Akerfeldt's guttural growls
puncture the nearly interminable arrangements with the kind of brutality that
stops die-hard death and black metal fans from giving up on the lengthy
arrangements completely, although with five exorbitant cuts clocking in at
ten-plus minutes (three of them over 13 minutes), some fat-trimming would have
kept things even remotely manageable. Still, one has to admire
Opeth's unwavering adherence to the album's astoundingly depressive tone,
Orchid being a near-brilliant ode to misery that would kick the door down for
Akerfeldt and his cohorts to claim sole ownership of a well-conceived and, at
the time, startlingly unique sound. [Note: Orchid was originally released in
1995 and reissued in 2000 by London-based label Candlelight with a bonus
track, “Into the Frost of Winter,” a considerably gritty, unproduced
rehearsal recording from 1992; not surprisingly, the bandmembers vastly improved
their songwriting and instrumental skills prior to Orchid's release. Parts of
the track would eventually morph into the song “Advent” on
Opeth's 1996 album Morningrise.] John Serba – Allmusic.com