My Arms, Your Hearse was the first Opeth album with drummer Martin Lopez, who answered a newspaper ad that Opeth put up searching for this spot to be taken after Anders Nordin left. Shortly thereafter the band also brought in Martín Méndez, a friend and previous bandmate of Lopez. However, Mendez did not have enough time to learn the bass parts for the album, so frontman Mikael Åkerfeldt played bass for the entire recording session. All of the songs on My Arms, Your Hearse are shorter than ten minutes, whereas on Opeth's previous album, Morningrise, every song exceeds this length. The album is dedicated to Lee Barrett. The title of the album is derived from the lyrics of the song "Drip, Drip" by the band Comus.
Concept
Åkerfeldt wrote all the lyrics before the music was written, to create Opeth's first concept album. Each song ends with the title of the next song. For example, “April Ethereal” ends with the word “when”, which is the name of the next track.
Reception
My Arms, Your Hearse was widely praised by critics. Steve Huey of AllMusic said that it "flows logically from one composition to the next, and the mostly long songs have enough variation in texture and mood to hold the listener's interest fairly consistently". Jeb of Metal Faith magazine said, "each song sort of flows into the next giving the whole album a unified feel". Jeff of Mid West Metal magazine commented, "having never been exposed to Opeth, I had them pegged as a typical black metal bands that sings about love and relationships and crap like that. I really didn't expect to get blown out of the water when 'April Ethereal' kicked in, from this point I am converted! And while the album has some mellow parts and some folk-ish characteristics, it's still a very intense album from a band who seems to have not forgotten how the fuck they got their current plateau in life." Christian Renner of Metal Crypt wrote, "the musicianship is brilliant as always and the songwriting is just what you would expect from this incredibly talented group. This is another great album that most bands out there would give their right arm to have written and that statement just speaks volumes of the songwriting talent of the Åkerfeldt/Lindgren team." Pedro Azevedo of Chronicles of Chaos said of the album, "though some parts of the drum sound are somewhat awkward at times, the instrumental performance is as great as one would expect, and Akerfeldt's vocals are again amazing. Top quality sections just flow throughout the album, making it truly -excellent-. My Arms, Your Hearse is a indeed a brilliant proof that Swedish metal isn't entirely stagnant." Tartarean Desire's critic Cseke Róbert wrote, "this record is more powerful and more beautiful than most of today's music from this genre. The entire record is a mixture of hell-bound adrenalin and soul... My Arms, Your Hearse is such a powerful album that I consider it one of the best of the genre." Demonic Tutor of Metal Storm stated the album is a "trip to heaven" and also: Tim Henderson of Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles said "you are in for a treat, easily described as the blackmetal version of The Dark Side of the Moon in all its pride and glory. In fact, if Gilmour joined Emperor, or if Cradle took sides with Yes, can My Arms, Your Hearse be truly described". "My Arms, Your Hearse is a milestone in '90s extreme metal", wrote Chris Bruni in his review for Unrestrained! magazine. He also wrote that the album is "easily their most stunning achievement" and "the songs are stronger, heavier, more cohesive, with a stronger sound courtesy of Studio Fredman, and the textures and song movements are some of the best executed structures to be heard in metal".
This is the second Opeth album with a major delayed release and the recording for My Arms, Your Hearse was done a year before its release, just like Orchid. My Arms, Your Hearse was released on August 18, 1998, simultaneously in Europe and the United States on CD by Candlelight Records and Century Black respectively. It was released in Poland by Mystic Production on cassette. The album was reissued in 2000 on CD by Candlelight Records and on LP by Displeased Records. The LP was limited to 1000 copies. These reissues contain two bonus tracks, "Circle of the Tyrants" and "Remember Tomorrow". They are covers of songs that were only previously available on two separate tribute albums, In Memory of Celtic Frost and , respectively. A special edition was released by Candlelight in 2003.
