Artist Page: Opeth

A strong follow up to Ghost Reveries, with the same tendencies to add more mellow passages between the extreme parts. In fact, it's the only album (except of course Damnation) that has more songs with only clean vocals than songs with growls. The music is also quite different from the Still Life - Deliverance era, with half of the band having been replaced and with the addition of a permanent keyboardist. Sounds like we have here a transitional album, but the transition seems almost complete...

Thanks in a fairly large part to Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree) this is as good as Opeth's Still Life but with even more amazing production. Pefect length, and acoustic/heavy parts. This and Still Life is the peak of Opeth, but personally, I find this release to be their ultimate peak.

A very strong release. Mikael is still the main songwriter, but it seems like the other band members (especially the new ones at drums and 2nd guitar) add their influences to the compositions more prominently than on the previous albums. And the keyboards are no longer side effects like on Ghost Reveries - in fact they give this a lush, symphonic touch which reminds me of Camel - who Mikael is a huge fan of - more than anything they did before. The growling is still there, but to a lesser extent - for the first time clean vocals dominate a heavy Opeth album. Add to that the epic long track, and you get - a masterly prog album!

No growls makes my ears much happier. This is a magnificent album.

Songs sound even worse live than recorded. Probably pretty good if you can handle the vocal growls, but I can't. Thought I would try it to see if it sounded any better, but it doesn't.

Almost as good as Blackwater Park, but just not the same level of production.

Perfect.

This is perhaps Opeth's heaviest album.  And while I much prefer Opeth's more mellow moments (such as those on the Damnation album), I do enjoy this album when in the right mood.  Akerfeldt's growls do wear on me after a while though, so this isn't an album that I'll probably ever listen to back-to-back.  "For Absent Friends" is a beautiful instrumental and gives the listener a pleasant intermission from the rest of the speedy Death Metal.

I was waiting for eight years for Opeth to deliver an album without extreme metal parts, and this is it - the complete antithesis from the twin album Deliverance (their heaviest album). Most people will find it too mellow, but not me... it's simply outstanding. Fans of Anathema and Porcupine Tree should love this album too.

Highly recommended (one of the 3 albums of my collection that could pretend to a maximum rating...)