BLACKWATER PARK

Steven Wilson and Opeth got together on Blackwater Park, with Wilson both performing on some tracks and producing the album. His influence can be particularly heard in the quieter passages of the album, which at points remind me of the indie rock-prog rock mashups Porcupine Tree produced on albums such as Stupid Dream and Lightbulb Sun.

For a while Blackwater Park - like much of Opeth's output - had left me a bit cold, coming across as a technically flashy but emotionally distant death metal and approximations of Porcupine Tree. Now, however, I'm in the process of reappraising Opeth and I think I understand the album much better than I used to. I'd previously noted Still Life as the point when the balance in Opeth's music swung from "death metal with prog elements" to "progressive metal with death metal elements", and whilst I'd say Blackwater Park is still just about in the latter camp, I actually think the death metal side of their sound expresses itself a touch more forcefully than on Still Life.

That's slightly counter-intuitive, since you'd expect Wilson's presence at the production desk would nudge the band into leaning into their prog side still further, but perhaps it worked out differently: because they had the confidence that their prog aspects would still shine forth, they could wave their death metal flag a little more without the album coming across as a regression to an earlier phase of their career - which it absolutely is not.

The end result to this is that Opeth manage to weave their death metal aspects into their prog aspects even more seamlessly than ever before, with the result that just as you think the album has left death metal territory entirely, the grunts and harder riffs swoop back in to plunge things into chaos once more, and just as you think they've reverted back to full death metal, suddenly a radically different musical passage emerges from the depths, and it all happens so seamlessly and smoothly that it's never jarring or awkward.

In short, Blackwater Park is every bit the masterpiece that Still Life was, a further refinement of the approach of that album enabled in part by the comparative stability of the lineup. (At the time this was the longest Opeth had gone without any lineup changes, and indeed this configuration of the band was pretty much the most stable one they'd have until the lineup that existed from Pale Communion to In Cauda Venenum.) As well as being a landmark release for Opeth fans, the album will likely also be of interest to Porcupine Tree fans interested in what transpired between Lightbulb Sun and In Absentia to prompt the band's radical musical change during that time period.