DELIVERANCE

Typically, Opeth is a study in contrasts, loud contrasted with soft, dirty vocals contrasted with clean vocals. Their best songs have an excellent balance of both. This album is weighted towards the loud, dirty side, but still has it's quieter and clean moments. The reason why the balance is a little out here is this album concentrates on the hard side while the album "Damnation" which was released 5 months later would be weighted very much towards the softer side. Between the two albums, progressive elements reign supreme. However, having an album leaning to the loud side is a little detrimental to the overall sound of the album. But, not enough of a detriment to still not be considered an excellent album. In contrast, Damnation in my opinion is a 5 star album where this one suffers a little at 4 stars.

It's not that I don't like heavy music, I love it. "Blackwater Park" is the better album out of that one and this one and there is plenty of hard music on that album. The part I don't like as much is the growling vocals. Mikael has a beautiful voice when he sings clean vocals, but I just don't get the harsh growling vocals, to me it distracts from the overall music. But the progressive elements of the metal instrumentals is amazing. The music is ever changing, tricky rhythms, dynamism and challenging at times. That is what makes this album worthwhile. To me, this was the first heavy Opeth album I heard and it was only because it came with the set I got that included "Damnation", which I fell in love with immediately, so naturally I listened to this also, and that opened my mind to other tech metal progressive bands, so this album has it's personal value to me. I actually discovered Anathema, Agollach, Ulver and others through this album.

So, it's not the best of their albums, but is one of the better ones. I give it 4 stars. A good way to introduce yourself to Tech metal along with "Damnation"