Festivities are beginning to wind down, everyone has chosen their favourite album of the year,drunk far too much and ordered their body weight in pizza, it’s time we get back to the good old stuff. So bringing back the Metal Masterpiece with a bang today we have the mighty

OPETH – DELIVERANCE

After releasing the equally astounding Blackwater Park merely a year earlier Opeth returned to the studio, not only to record one album but two! Similar to our new upstarts Periphery the band decided to create a double album. One side being the sepia draped melancholy of Damnation, showcasing the softer but just as mopey side to the band (perfect for those rainy days) and ying to their yang Deliverance. Originally penned for a double album release the label decided to release both six months after the other. Benefiting Opeth in the long run as there is simply so much to assimilate from both albums.

With almost all songs clocking in past the ten minute mark, save for the interlude of “For Absent Friends“. This was a very much all in effort, with Akerfeldt’s crooning and abyss devouring voices playing on two fronts the album is one of their heaviest and contains potentially the best song the band has ever written and now an essential part of their live performance. “Deliverance” epitomises (mid) Opeth perfectly, not quite as black metal as their previous efforts on Morningrise or as out there as Heritage although you could argue there are elements in the album that show perhaps their movement into the prog rock sphere was inevitable.

With many people believing that Blackwater Park is their masterpiece, simply put pretty much every Opeth album is a work of genius. What separates them from being a pipeline band however is that all the works as masterpieces for different reasons. Never recording the same album twice, even in the short space of one year between Deliverance it sounds nothing like their previous efforts,yet exactly what you would want from the band, therein lies the rub…