Half of a concept album pairing with 2002′s Deliverance, Opeth complemented the more aggressive title with softer songs, as much of Damnation holds to prog rock and metal played on acoustic guitar, saving electric guitar for accents and punch-up. The band’s turn from their early style of blackened death metal to more melodic material is, to a degree, crystallized with this album, and while subsequent albums would immediately return to a heavier and louder sound, later ones would also gradually turn back to relatively gentle song-writing more in line with this one’s approach.
While the guitars do dominate the album, practically everyone but the bassist gets a chance in the spot-light, with vocal-led pieces such as “Death Whispered a Lullaby” or the drum-flourishing “In My Time of Need” rounding things out in other directions. Lyrically, the album leans on fantasy-infused abstractions of drama, which work well enough on a superficial level, but without the death-growls to obscure their content, end up largely dragging down the songs with their overwrought nature when seriously considered. Arguably a very successful experiment for the band, considering how much it influenced their later direction, but in spite of the lightness of the instruments, the non-instrumental parts of the album feel bogged down in self-aware self-importance, making it most effectively consumed in the form of singles.
Scrambled Brains 