Opeth-Blackwater Park (2001)
Artist: Opeth
Title: Blackwater Park
Sell Price: $7.11
Sell Date: 4/3/26
Condition: VG+/VG+
Discogs Last Sold: 2/28/26 M/M $15.00
Low: $4.00
Median: $6.49
Average: $6.84
High: $15.00
Current low price: $4.75 VG/VG+
Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 2
Have/Want: 137/119
Where Sold: Winnetka, CA
Time It Took To Sell: 3 years
Where and When Buught: Facebook marketplace lot
Gwiz-gau Grade: B
Sad To See It Go: No
Blackwater Park is album number 5, roughly 6 years after their debut for Swedish prog metal band Opeth. The album is now a quarter of a century on and 5 years after a 20th anniversary edition. However metal in all it's editions general sell, particularly something like this.
Opeth is one of those bands I've liked when I first heard them a few albums after this one, Basically I liked the epics and a little more variety than the blackened prog death genre allows. Certainly the European tradition and Swedish perspective helps. This is probably why they wound up playing the Apollo Theatre the last time I saw the band in 2020. This particular album is the one that has been played most live over the years, although that night only "The Leper Affinity" was played from here. The one that was proven to be my least favorite track. I guess the ones that I like here for the most part are not the bombastic crowd pleasers. The biggest cut here over time by far is "The Drapery Falls."
Since I had no connection to the album before I listened to it a few times this week, the 25th anniversary interview video was fairly enlightening. In many ways, the leader Michael feels much the same way that I do where the music is good in parts and some of it could be scrapped. It seems this record was a commercial breakthrough due to increased distribution and a ramp up in major level touring. Since I first heard the band some point slightly later in the timeline, I don't have that mapping in my head of the career of Opeth. For me it seemed like they were always "major underground" and I didn't have any emotional stake in their rise and evolution. So I'm just looking at Blackwater Park as a random Opeth album that I got in a pile of cheap CD's as opposed to a discography I have followed from inception or a specific album I was alerted to. The video alerted me to Steven Wilson's involvement producing and engineering the album, so then things started to make a bit more sense. You could say I get some of the same feelings of like and dislike when I hear Porcupine Tree as I do hearing Opeth. The aspects of classic rock guitar music among the signifiers of modern commercially sucessful underground metal with progressive overtones. The type of stuff I might check out live even at a theatre level headlining ticket price, but rarely want to listen to recordings of.
When "The Leper Affinity" opened the record I wasn't too into the Blackened meets Queensryche/Tool approach of the vocals as the song rolled on ten minutes to it's solo piano conclusion. As the album wore on there were 4 tracks that I thought broke out of that to become enjoyable. The video for one of them, "Harvest" is hilarious. The acoustic chord progressions is stummed and we follow the band in the studio recording, discussing, walking down long halls and always punctuatied repetitively by the acoustic progression. The title track that the album reminds me of "Seasons In The Abyss" by Slayer, another title track closer. "The Funeral Portrait" has a punctuating Oh! and "Dirge For November" as an etherial quality almost like "I'd Love To Change The World" by Ten Years After. Far from black metal.
Opeth are at their best when they spread out.
FOR FURTHER REVIEW:
Porcupine Tree-Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape Archive 1984-1991 (1994)
Jethro Tull-A Passion Play (1973)
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