Blackwater Park

With their fifth album, Sweden’s Opeth redefined what death metal can be. Marrying technical metal with shimmering acoustic passages and vocals both harsh and clean, Blackwater Park is a boldly crafted epic. “Harvest” and “Patterns in the Ivy” confirm songwriter Mikael Åkerfeldt a master of subtlety, with sweet harmonies over gentle guitar. The dense metal dynamics of “The Drapery Falls” and soaring 12-minute title track, which jumps from brutal riffage to atmospheric fingerpicking, prove Opeth’s prog metal power is all in the journey.