Quote Originally Posted by Grumpyprogfan View Post
Is the record label or the artist responsible for approving the final mix? Whomever, they should be ashamed of the final product.
The mix is clearly an artistic choice, and in my opinion a good one. Someone mentioned Rainbow Rising, and I would also mention 80's heavy metal music. Yes, it's flat, very flat, but it's a good, very good flat mix that adds power and heaviness to the music.

The problem is not the mix, but the compositions which are - as is so often the case with Opeth - hit or miss. Moments of greatness combined with passages which seem alien to the overall flow of the song (the Universal Truth), or songs which seem alien to the flow of the album (Lovelorn Crime, the Garroter). There is this lack of coherence or strategic clarity that one should expect from Opeth nowadays (anyway, I do).

Quote Originally Posted by auxfnx View Post
gave this a listen, and like with their last 2 albums before this, still not coming close to the heights they reached with Heritage. :/
I agree. Heritage and Ghost Reveries are the 2 Opeth albums that I truly like.