Since their arrival in 1990 as the self-proclaimed "most evil band in the world," Sweden's Opeth have become one of the most influential heavy metal groups in all of Northern Europe. Though their musical beginning was rooted in occult-saturated, doomy death metal, as evidenced by 1995's Orchid and the following year's Morningrise, by the time they issued 1998's globally acclaimed My Arms, Your Hearse, they were already threading progressive elements into their music. As the band's individuals grew musically and personnel shifted, their approach and sonic palette expanded. 2001's groundbreaking Blackwater Park may have drawn heat from purist death metal fans and critics, but global prog-metal fans championed it. By the time they issued 2005's Ghost Reveries, a foundational fusion of death and prog metal, they were charting in dozens of countries, including the Top Ten in their native Sweden. In the 2010s, Opeth pursued full-on prog-cum-folk-metal for 2011's Heritage, an album that signified the band's long-expected departure from the death metal aesthetic; they underscored it with an exclamation point on 2015's Pale Communion, which sold more than 19,000 copies during its first week of release in the United States.