This is a great release by Mikael Akerfeldt & company, one which will surely fortify Opeth's capacity in the prog arena where the proponents of black-tinged metal tread with hesitation.
Guitar-wise, Akerfeldt has a fresh sparring partner who is one of the better players in this industry; Fredrik Akesson. As such, the overall guitar tones here are very polished & defined, thanks to the partners' obsession with all things guitars & the expansion of PRSes in this release.
Despite the countless accolades this album receives, it has limited appeal to me; I'm quite averse to the 'nice' vocals, my tolerance being the lung burst of Master Ihsahn. Add to that the crawl-run-crawl concept of the album in its entirety; I'm selling this away (yes, it's the deluxe, 'envelope' edition as depicted here)... you want?
Be informed o' ye who wish to, P-90 stacked install, in the neck position- the cavity isn't deep enough. I've decided to just add a cover to it so that it looks less bare-bones & thanks to the master touches of BEEZ, my BFG is up & running once more. I'm also basically done with the mods/ swaps, it'll stay as it is.
