OPETH Damnation CD Digipak (2003)

2003. Opeth released a death metal album with no death metal on it. Half their fanbase lost their minds. The other half put Damnation on repeat and didn't surface for a week.

Where its companion piece Deliverance bludgeoned, Damnation goes quiet in the most unsettling way possible. Mikael Åkerfeldt buried the growls entirely and delivered forty minutes of progressive rock melancholy that owes more to Camel and early 70s British prog than anything happening in the Stockholm metal scene. It shouldn't work as an Opeth record. It absolutely works. The Swedes have always understood that darkness doesn't have to be loud, and Damnation remains one of the starkest proofs of that in the band's catalogue.

Swedish progressive rock, 2003 full length. Digipak CD pressing. Fans of: Amon Amarth, Mastodon, Gojira, Soen.