Blackwater Park
- Scores: Noise 3, Unease 3, Complexity 4 (each 1 to 5)
- Genre: Metal, Prog metal, Death metal
- Mood: melancholic, progressive, heavy
- Sound: growls and clean vocals, extended songs, acoustic interludes
Blackwater Park blends progressive death metal with progressive rock in long, multi-section songs, most running 8 to 12 minutes. Opeth recorded it at Studio Fredman in Gothenburg in autumn 2000 with Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree co-producing. The band had no lyrics written and had rehearsed only three times beforehand. Mikael Åkerfeldt moves between growled and clean vocals, and Wilson sang clean and backing vocals on several songs and added piano and extra guitar. Acoustic-led passages sit alongside the heavy electric ones, and the arrangements draw on 1970s art-rock. Wilson’s work is described as shifting Opeth’s style, and the album is a key reference point for progressive death metal
Track list
- The Leper Affinity (10:23)
- Bleak (9:15)
- Harvest (5:58)
- The Drapery Falls (10:52)
- Dirge for November (7:51)
- The Funeral Portrait (8:42)
- Patterns in the Ivy (1:50)
- Blackwater Park (12:08)