Well I’ve just sat here for near on an hour with my speakers cranked listening to Opeth’s latest offering of sonic delights, Watershed, and I have only one thing to say to sum it up: I will be buying this album.

Now in this day and age of fast internet, huge quotas and excessive CD prices, there isn’t really much of an incentive to shell out for music.

See if the bands actually got much of the money being raked in from physical sales, then maybe I might be interested, but to be honest that’s just not the case.

So like the majority of people I take alternative methods in order to encounter new music, and for awhile it was Pandora, before the record companies complained they weren’t getting enough revenue from international users and blocked it off.

So when I say I will buy an album at the overly inflated prices we have to deal with these days, to put it in perspective it’s a big thing.

These days when I buy a cd, I’m almost certainly going to take it straight home and rip it to FLAC and then stash it away on a shelf or something, as truth be told I do all my listening digitally such as via FOOBAR2k or my iPod (Rockbox FTW). So utilising such a fragile medium like CD isn’t in my best interests.

So whilst I may have obtained this album without going through the appropriate channels, I will be buying a copy this Thursday when my pay goes through.

So about the album itself.
It’s the kind you need to listen to at a decent volume through decent equipment and not some shitty little iPod earbuds. Get yourself some good headphones at the least with a respectable bass response and all that.

Then make sure you have some snacks and drinks on hand, turn off your phone and so on, queue the album up, and then unleash it.

I mean I’m considering it their best release to date.

To put things in perspective, I first heard Damnation, before going back to such things as Blackwater Park.
This influenced my opinion of them.

Ghost Reveries was all very well and good, but I don’t feel it was anywhere near as on the mark.

So if you like Opeth, get your hands on Watershed ASAP and decide for yourself, it is the real stuff of gods.

And a message to you folks at the RIAA and MPAA and other such leeches, whilst CD Single sales may be down (funny, selling a cd with one main track on it plus a bunch of shit remixes and half-arsed b-sides for half the price of an album isn’t worth our time,) compare that to album sales.
Then realise that bands are shifting to alternative distribution methods as most recently demonstrated by Nine Inch Nails on Ghosts.

Jacking up the prices and gouging the artists doesn’t sell CDs.
Placing copy protection on things we’ve paid good money for doesn’t sell CDs.
Such methods have been proven time and again to not work.

I don’t have fuckloads of disposable income, so I have to be a bit more select about what I buy.

Watershed is an example of the quality you should aspire to, people will buy it.

And now I should probably go and wait for the men in suits to come to my door demanding PC.

AmK
I believe in quality.