This came out in 2003 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
When most bands put out a six-song disc, you can safely expect it to be an EP that takes about 20 minutes to get through. But for Swedish prog-metal tacticians Opeth, six songs is a whole album — and a whole hour’s worth of tyranny and mutation.
Deliverance, their sixth full-length, picks up where 2001’s Blackwater Park left off, with the band erect grand epics of devastation out of the crushing syncopated drumbeats, Evil Cookie Monster vocals and inhumanly intricate guitar shredding that typify most of their death-metal cohorts. But between the hellfire and brimstone lurk elements that provide Deliverance with individuality and variation — haunting instrumental passages, ghostly vocals and a bleak, otherworldly vibe. Aside from providing a welcome respite from the carnage and bloodlust, these elements dovetail nicely with the lyrics, which are all about sleep and death and slipping from one world to another — or something like that. To be honest, I couldn’t really figure it all out. All I know is that if it’s as all-encompassing for them to write these tunes as it is to listen to them, no wonder they only make six at a time.
