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Editor's Note: Undoubtedly there will be a lot of whining over this one. Rather than force me to just forward your whinefest to him (I'm busy doing more interesting things, such as watching paint dry), please e-mail the reviewer directly by clicking on his name above.

Fuck Opeth. They have never produced an album that did not alternately bore or irritate me, and this is no exception. I am sure fanboys will line up to fellate this bloated crapfest just like they did the last one, but the truth is that Opeth have just squeezed out another self-indulgent turd for their masses of jizz-spewing worshipers to cluster around and lick rapturously, all the while proclaiming "Oh, this is the best turd I have ever licked!"

Opeth suck, and I am voting them off the island right now. What we have here is an interminable album of songs that all sound the same: long songs padded out with repetitious riffs, horrible acoustic breaks, and awful keyboard shit that sounds like that 70's organ sound. Dreadful. This whole album sounds like it dropped out of the 70's, like some horrible mating of King Crimson and James Taylor. And as if that were not enough, the clean vocals here are obviously meant to sound like Maynard Keenan, since the background music goes all polyrhythmic when they kick in, so the music sounds as much like Tool as possible. Ugh. All the good, heavy parts on here sound like ripoffs from Novembers Doom, so ditch this crap and go get "The Pale Haunt Departure" – you'll be much better off.

I won't spend much longer on this review, since I already spent way too long listening to this endless noodling abomination. I give this a half-point more than the terrible "Morningrise", as there are moments on the first two songs that are not utterly unlistenable. But the rest of this is just as fraudulent as all the rest of Opeth's crap. Millions of Opeth fans can't be wrong? Fuck that. Opeth blows, stay away from this overinflated garbage scow of an album.