Going through the Opeth catalogue again

While my views on the band's original sound, which appears to be making something of a comeback on their new one, haven't really changed - I still rank Still Life, Blackwater Park and Ghost Reveries as my top three - I surprised myself by how my views on the prog rock albums have changed.

When Heritage came out, it represented a vastly different side of Opeth. It wasn't even really comparable to Damnation. I dug it though. I played the first single The Devil's Orchard so much that to this day it's still ranked on my Last.fm as one of my most played Opeth songs. Yet this time around, with them having made three further albums, I found that I wasn't feeling it so much. Compared to what came next, Pale Communion, an album I once would have said was Opeth's weakest and actually led to them losing my interest until Sorceress came out and brought some metal elements back, it feels very disjointed and unfocussed. Perhaps it can fairly be called Opeth's most experimental album, but I found that while I don't dislike it, I have soured on it. 

The opposite is true of Pale Communion, which has only grown in my estimations of the years. Although their sound changed, I can hear more of the old Opeth in its song writing than with Heritage which now sounds like they were trying too hard to break away from what went before. 

I have always really liked Sorceress and it got me back interested in Opeth when it came out. My appreciation (and purchase of) Pale Communion only came after that album was released. 

As I said, I still have In Cauda Venenum to revisit, which may happen today, but when it came out I felt it was their best since Watershed. More metal parts without abandoning the prog rock approach that had become their new thing for almost a decade at that point. I've played the English version more, although I believe the Swedish language version is considered the album by the band. I'll be playing both as part of this run, and I expect to be playing their music a lot over the next month until the new one is released. 

I am really enjoying both new songs released so far which are very different to each other. 

I'd put Watershed in my top 3 Opeth albums which few probably would. I agree it was a transitional album that wasn't really apparent at the time of release due it also containing some of the bands heaviest moments. Even the tracks that only contained clean vocals were still generally pretty heavy apart from Coil and Burden.

Apart from that one Ghost Reveries and Blackwater Park are my favourites. In Cauda Venenum is my favourite since they ditched the death metal growls but now they seem to be back, though used sparingly if the first review I read in Classic Rock is anything to go by.

Already ordered the special edition box set of The Last Will and Testament as I did last time. Not many bands I'd splash out on expensive box sets but Opeth are one of them.