“We took a break from fucking – which is all we do in Sweden – to come visit you and play some rock n’ roll”, announced Mikael Åkerfeldt, frontman of progressive death metallers Opeth. And that’s pretty much what they did on the first date of the Australian leg of their tour, in support of latest release Watershed.

Earlier in the evening, doom goths Virgin Black kicked off proceedings. The Adelaide five-piece played a handful of very long, gloomy, atmospheric songs with a heavy reliance on pre-recorded vocals (not surprisingly, it seems their live show budget doesn’t extend to a full symphonic chorale). Singer Rowan London has an interesting vocal range which stretches from an angelic tenor to a tortured wail and then down to a full-on death metal growl – nothing if not versatile – and the band play well, but Virgin Black have a very serious goth aesthetic that will only appeal to a very select audience.

Opeth took the stage and the mood was immediately elevated with Fair Judgement: the start of an epic musical journey lasting well over two hours.

Åkerfeldt is an amusing bloke and he spent time in between each track telling funny stories – how his daughter prefers 80’s glam rockers Twisted Sister to Opeth; about American rock oddball Ted Nugent’s obsessive compulsive backstage tidying habits; about being a self-described “pretentious cunt” in his youth.

The Opeth crowd, while definitely a heavy metal crowd, are there primarily to listen to the music, and as such some things happen at Opeth shows that you might not see at other metal gigs: polite applause, for example. That’s not to say that the show wasn’t metal. All the essential elements – kick-arse light show, blistering solos, stage full of smoke and of course, those devil horns – were present and accounted for.

A highlight of the set came at the end, in the form of Demon of the Fall from 1998 release My Arms, Your Hearse – announced as the most evil song of the band’s most evil album.

The punters were having none of it, however, demanding an encore with applause and chanting. The band acquiesced and Åkerfeldt took time to introduced the band – a “new band made up of old fucks”: guitarist Fredrik Åkesson, drummer Martin Axenrot and keyboardest Per Wiberg have all been around for at most two of the band’s nine studio albums, with only bassist Martin Mendez being veteran (although still not a founding member).

Only one song was saved for the encore: the beautiful The Drapery Falls from Blackwater Park – a fitting end to an intense evening.