CRIMSON

Maybe the most ambitious death-metal album at least in concept, it also features cohesive songwriting, a number of styles ranging from mellow acoustic a la Opeth towards the sinister death metal. Akerfeldt's growling is another winning argument, his vocals are already at this point better than Swano despite being in the formative years. At this point of career, Akerfeldt had a black-metal higher-pitched style than the death-metal deeper growl features from 1998. Listen also to the instrumental parts that easily abandon the death-metal cliche with slower more epic riffing.

While there may not be multiple surfaces in the music like in a typical prog-metal or rock music, there are so many shifts in the dynamics and motives that it will take you many time to absorb and appreciate all. We can hear recurring hooks and the ending is epic with somewhat grandiose chord progressions and synths in the background.

No doubt it is one of the finest progressive death-metal releases of the 20th century (not so many candidates anyways ;))