10 Heavy Metal Albums By Bands Thought Past Their Prime

Describing Opeth as "controversial" feels like an odd, but technically correct statement. While no release has been fraught any particular incident or clashed with the world's status quo, each release since 2003's 'Damnation' has torn the Opeth fanbase almost completely in half.

Whilst never reviewing particularly poorly, Mikael Åkerfeldt’s transition from a progressive death metal juggernaut into a clean, Porcupine Tree-inspired prog rock outfit has divided a very dedicated following, and indirectly fuelling boring "that's not metal"-types whose purist ideologies need to be cast out to the sea. But I digress.

Åkerfeldt since spent years awkwardly trying to balance the wants and needs of the more rabid portions of his fanbase with appeasing his own creativity. Following one last death metal-tinged hurrah with 2008's appropriate-named 'Watershed', he then fully divulged in his prog rock aspirations, beginning with 2011's 'Heritage', with releases reviewing well and receiving variable praise, of course based on one's tolerance of wanky prog rock.

Come 2019 though, and the pieces finally fell into place for Åkerfeldt, and ‘In Cauda Venenum’ saw universal acclaim from both sides of the heavy spectrum. A victory for Åkerfeldt and indeed Opeth as a band, the album was quickly labelled “the best album the band has ever created in their prog era”.