Blackwater Park

It came out in Europe on 12 March 2001 and in North America the next day — the first Opeth album released there at the same time as everywhere else. The title is taken from the German progressive rock band of the same name, and this is the first record for which they had a title before recording began. The connection to Steven Wilson started when an interviewer who was a friend of Mikael Akerfeldt's, and knew he admired Wilson's work, gave Wilson a copy of Still Life. Wilson liked it enough to get in touch, and a few months later, over dinner, the two of them discussed his producing the next album. Akerfeldt sent him the demos and Wilson agreed. The band entered Studio Fredman on 10 August 2000 with no lyrics written and three rehearsals behind them. Their engineer Fredrik Nordstrom had arranged a small room in the studio with four beds in it; they stayed about two weeks and then rented Mikael Stanne of Dark Tranquillity's flat. Once the drums, rhythm tracks, bass and acoustic guitars were down, Wilson arrived to produce the clean vocals and add some guitar leads. Akerfeldt has written that Wilson had an "immense impact on the recording" and that afterwards the band entered "a new phase". The running order here is the original's as printed.