By the driving force of lead vocalist, songwriter and guitarist Mikael Åkerfeldt Opeth became one of the most successful Swedish bands.
On their 9th studio album Watershed they’re combining their death metal elements with progressive structured music.
It’s critically acclaimed because of the alternation between slow melodic parts and dark heavy riffages. The folky clean vocal parts of Mikael Åkerfeldt and his harsh death growls have been growing over the years. His clean singing reaches out to the heaviness in “The Lotus Eater”. The songs offers both the extremeness of their guitar and drum driven sounds as the dreamy sounds of keyboards and synthesizer.
The more brutal songs, such as “Heir Apparent”, breathes the growling vocals with progressive elements. The wall of guitar riffs with speedy drumming creates the doomy atmosphere. Nowadays the album can be seen as one of the strongest efforts from their impressive catalogue. The Watershed vinyl package includes a 4 page booklet and a poster.