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

always preferred this track to anything that ended up on Damnation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fo1HfBItEc

aight. I'll begin by saying I still don't understand the love Blackwater Park gets. to me, that was the beginning of a downslide. find much of the album to be bland and forgettable.

Orchid through MAYH are fantastic. Morningrise was the de facto classic amongst the prog cognoscenti, I love it but I think I like the immediacy of MAYH more. I will admit this is largely for sentimental reasons - I got it the summer before I went away to college, my final summer in my hometown with my friends, and played it a lot on a performance troupe trip up to NYC, and it stuck with me. but I also love the fuck out of "April Ethereal" and of course "Demon of the Fall".

"Still Life" was great - they learned that adding traditional songwriting tropes more frequently wasn't a bad thing. Love "Benighted", really the entire album has some great melodies and guitar work.

Damnation and Deliverance didn't grab me. Ghost Reveries, though, I felt was a great late-career move. felt like more of a 70's prog rock album than anything metal but the songwriting is just so good. Watershed I liked but felt like a step backwards.

Have yet to hear Heritage, but Pale Communion was a solid album.

right now I think it's between MAYH or Ghost Reveries, will think on it.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

i am listening to every Opeth album in chronological order

it is absolutely striking how enormous the jump from the first 3 albums to Still Life is, it's like they went away and learnt how to write songs

I haven't listened to "Still Life" in a while, but it's sounding goooooooooooooood.

it's immense, and it's clear from the first couple of minutes just what is now in play

I used to not like Blackwater but I gave only a few listens back when it came out. I definitely enjoy it a lot more now

Still Life is the only one of their studio albums I don't own a physical CD of. I should rectify that one of these days, but mostly for completism's sake; I don't listen to it very often.

i remember paying extra cos it was an import at the local record store, only for the shit to get US distribution not long after.

the first one I bought was My Arms, Your Hearse

Learning that he is a Scott Walker fan (from that video where he goes record shopping) has given me a different perspective on the so-called prog ballads on the recent albums.

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/