Twenty-five years on from what many consider their benchmark album, Opeth’s Blackwater Park has been certified with a silver disc and is to be reissued in half silver/half black vinyl and as a picture disc showcasing the album’s original art direction.
In a world flailing in a state of post-grunge confusion, with four albums under their belt, Opeth were forging an entirely unique and fearlessly creative path. Back in 2001, prog was steadily being rehabilitated in the eyes of the mainstream and open-minded metalheads, so when Opeth began featuring songs over ten minutes long, music fans took interest, listened and purchased.
Already amassing a steadily building reputation, the record was received overwhelmingly positively from fans and critics alike. Owing to new production techniques, a lengthy recording time and new personnel, the record made its peers seem narrow, small and colourless in comparison. Blackwater Park bulged with exhilarating dynamics and genre-mashing ingenuity, but also had tunes: huge, life-affirming melodies and soaring choruses, memorable lead guitar hooks, and flashes of exquisite, fragile restraint.
Blackwater Park didn’t turn Opeth into millionaires, but it did introduce the band to a much larger audience, broadening their appeal from the somewhat restrictive confines of the metal underground to both the wider metal scene and, as only seemed right, the progressive rock world.
Featuring Mikael Åkerfeldt (vocals, lead guitar), Peter Lindgren (rhythm guitar), Martín Méndez (bass guitar) and Martin Lopez (drums), the reissued vinyl editions of Blackwater Park feature on the A side ‘The Leper Affinity’ and ‘Bleak’, the B side ‘Harvest’ and ‘The Drapery Falls’, the C side ‘Dirge for November’, ‘The Funeral Portrait’ and ‘Patterns in the Ivy’, and the D side ‘Blackwater Park’ and ‘The Leper Affinity (Live)’. It will be released on 27th March via Music For Nations and can be ordered from the Opeth store.
Since the album was first recorded, Opeth have spent the subsequent two decades forging ahead and growing. On 1st August they will play their only UK date of 2026, performing at TK Maxx Presents Live at The Piece Hall in Halifax, with Paradise Lost and Katatonia as special guests. Tickets are available from The Piece Hall.
