By the POLL I See In Others: the Opeth album poll

he is a Scott Walker fan

Always sad to find such chasms of taste in artists you admire.

Do you dislike Opeth ballads more, after learning that they might be influenced by an artist you dislike?

No, not at all. I don't dislike their ballads, for one thing, and I don't hear the influence of Walker at all.

I have come to love both Ghost Reveries and In Cauda Venenum. I've struggled to get excited about Watershed, Heritage, Pale Communion or Sorceress.

I've heard all those except Sorceress, and nothing earlier; and maybe my retro-prog judgement is impaired, but unlike a lot of listeners I don't hear a big difference in quality. Just a number of good songs on each and a number of less fully-digested compositional ideas.

I'm more or less in line with that; there are no Opeth stinkers, afaict, just different vibes, I guess. Definitely worth listening to the band's earlier stuff, especially when the metal started to make way for retro-prog, like on "Still Life," or "Blackwater Park" and "Deliverance"/"Damnation," the albums made with Steven Wilson.

THERE IS NO HELL! no, no no. the range of perfect guitar tones is a marvel. elements of "moon above, sun below" are 80s crimson, but with vocals less performatively zany than belew, giving way to serious epic zeppelin prog-blues, before iron maiden math moments that build to bridges of gentle giant harmonies: "voices of despair, a familiar friendship, society in your hair, what's the code of destruction?" dOPETHrone \m/