Damnation is a 2003 album from Opeth that arrived as the quiet half of a two-record statement — its companion piece Deliverance being all brutality and progressive death metal, while Damnation stripped everything back to something almost unbearably gentle. Mikael Åkerfeldt’s clean vocals carry the whole record without a single growl in sight, drifting over acoustic guitars, Hammond organ, and arrangements that owe as much to late sixties progressive rock and folk as they do to anything in metal.
The result is an album that feels less like a heavy band taking a breather and more like a band revealing what they actually sound like when nobody’s watching. It’s melancholic and unhurried and quietly devastating, the kind of record that sounds best at three in the morning when you’re not sure what you’re feeling but you know this is the right soundtrack for it.
Damnation is progressive rock and folk rock at its core, with strong influences from late sixties and early seventies artists like Nick Drake and Camel. It’s one of the few Opeth records that sits entirely outside metal, which is either a selling point or a warning depending on what you came for.
Damnation was performed by the Opeth lineup of the time — Mikael Åkerfeldt on vocals and guitars, Peter Lindgren on guitars, Martin Mendez on bass, and Martin Lopez on drums. Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree co-produced the record alongside Åkerfeldt, and his fingerprints are all over the sound — the two had a close creative relationship during that period that benefited both of their catalogs considerably.
It was released on Music for Nations in 2003.