This is Opeth's fifth album, Blackwater Park. The group is from Stockholm, Sweden. The current lineup consists of Michael Akerfeldt, Peter Lindgren, Martin Lopez and Martin Mendez. Michael and Peter have been together since the group's inception in 1990.

The music is impossible to categorize. It is a blend of heavy metal, goth, out and out guitar led rock and roll, and moments of serene classical beauty. Akerfeldt, the lead singer, goes from electronically altered voice to his own lyric tenor at a moment's notice, but it's always the right sound for those words, that particular musical phrase.

The words are laments for love dead, love lost, lives in disarray. From the opening lines of the first song, "We entered winter once again" to the last line of the album "Sun sets forever over Blackwater park" the sense of longing for what has been before fills each phrase. At times the music echoes the empty loss, at other times it is so strongly contrasted with the words that I wonder if I've heard the words correctly. This unrest, argument, between the music and words is one of Opeth's greatest attractions for me.

The Leper Affinity and Bleak are very similar pieces - growling lyrics, heavy metal sound, discordant harmonies that still work in a wonderful way. The third track, Harvest, is quite different. It is rock with a ballad-like style. Guitars provide the accompaniment with a very light drum beat accenting the measures.

The Drapery Falls continues the ballad sound with Akerfeldt's voice begging us to "Please remedy my confusion, and thrust me back to the day." But as the guitars sing and echo, first without the percussion, and then urged on by it, one feels loathe to return to the day. Night with Opeth's music is so much more seductive. The music looses its lyric quality as the dementia grows, guitars repeating the same off kilter progression over and over till the listener is trapped in the progressive madness with no hope of escape. The sudden return of lyric voices startles the listener and the last stanza goes back and forth between dementia and lucidity, in the words, the accompaniment, and the quality of the music. Leper Affinity and Blackwater Park seem to be more popular songs from what I have been able to read, but The Drapery Falls is by far my favorite because of the contrasts in the music throughout the piece.

Dirge for November gives us more evidence of Opeth's musical diversity. It is a folk song, simply sung, simply accompanied by guitars, full of the pathos of time past, lost. At least the first verse is. The second verse surprises with a return to rock and roll, driving guitars and drums. It finishes with guitars playing - nothing fancy, just a few measures repeated over and over, dismal, dark and monotonous as November rain.

The Funeral Portrait is anything but funereal in its opening lines. The guitars and the drums push and pull the listener. It is impossible to sit still during this song - if, indeed, you've been able to sit still at all during these pieces. Akerfeldt's voice is again a growl, a chant full of anger, impassioned and hard, as he sings his enemy's death. "Caked in the soil beneath, Fear me when we meet" he sings. The guitars sing and whine around and above the never slacking pace of the drums.

If you were to hear Patterns in the Ivy on a classical radio station it would not surprise you for it is only classical guitar, bass guitar and piano together in a short instrumental piece. But in the hands of Opeth's musicians it still contains the plaintiveness, the sound of loss and anguish that characterizes this whole album.

The title track is the last one on the album. Blackwater Park begins with guitars in discordant harmonies, over a strong drum foundation. Yes, I know 'discordant harmonies' is a total contradiction but that's exactly the effect the music produces. Akerfeldt again dons his growling voice, but with a difference. This time the words are very clear and sharp hitting the ear with their virulence. "Confessor of the tragedies of man lurking in the core of us all." The music softens to guitars more in harmony but still with little sharp corners that just won't fit in the whole. The growling voice returns singing of death, the avenging reaper. One is left convinced that every wicked thing one has personally committed has contributed to the "Sick liaisons raised this monumental mark. The sun sets forever over Blackwater park." And it sets with a single guitar fading into silence and dark.