BLACKWATER PARK

I'm going to ask you a quick question. Do you like two minute songs over-extended to eight, nine and ten minutes, but still doing an amazing job? If you do, you will like this album, if you don't, you probably won't like this album.

Look at Bleak, The Funeral Portrait, and Dirge For November: all three songs ≥8mins, all three with sense of build up, and all three being necessarily long. There's reasons for being as long as they are, and that's what's good with almost the entire album.

Just... Very good death metal. One characteristic of death metal that bands like Cynic or Death stablished was making Death Metal dynamic and defined. If a song is four minutes long, it's because it deserves to be four minutes long. If a song is eight minutes long, it's because it deserves to be eight minutes long. And Blackwater Park clearly does well at that. On top of that, incredibly inaccessible, making this a hard listen even for people used to growls in metal.

One of my favorite Opeth albums, and I still don't understand why it doesn't get so much praise. Five stars.