Opeth Blackwater Park 20th Anniversary Edition White Vinyl Edition

In many ways, Opeth’s Blackwater Park can be considered as their answer to The Beatles’ Revolver, both uncompromising and experimental, but equally commercially viable and unfuckwithable masterpieces. Twenty years on, Blackwater Park remains a breath-taking piece of work, dense with extraordinary melodic moments, spine-tingling atmospherics and agile but crushing heaviness. It is also arguably still the most cherished album in the Swedish metallers illustrious catalogue as a rising progressive influence kicked open prog’s ornate doors, fed death metal through the cosmic kaleidoscope and introduced a generation of music nerds to a world of limitless musical possibilities. After four albums of imaginative and immersive heavy music, the band were primed and ready to make a career-defining statement. At the time, the metal world was flailing in a state of post-grunge confusion, meanwhile, Opeth were forging an entirely unique and fearlessly creative path. Back in 2001, prog was steadily being rehabilitated in the eyes of the mainstream, but there was still something audacious about Opeth’s rise to prominence. With several songs passing the ten-minute mark, Blackwater Park was no kind of commercial compromise. Instead, its popularity and acclaim proved a couple of valuable points: that music fans (and metalheads, in particular) are often vastly more open-minded than they are given credit for, and that depth, subtlety, sophistication and imagination were all credible selling points.