Massive Opeth fan here, so much so, their logo is inked on my upper arm. I've purposely avoided listening to any of the tracks to date as I want to hear it as a complete piece of work. I much prefer their later 'prog' work with clean vocals but I did, over the years, come to appreciate the 'cookie monster' interludes.
I like reading this, because you're honestly the very first example of "massive Opeth fan" I've ever come across in my life who apparently really got into them
after they quit the death metal vocals. Maybe it's because I come mostly from metal circles in my background as music enthusiast, and every single big Opeth fan I know (myself included) became such a fan during their progressive death metal era - either right after the release of
Ghost Reveries or (most of the times) way before that.
So I'm actually very happy to see that someone really got into them during the prog rock, clean vocals only phase. I mean, as a really massive fan, not just as someone who enjoys their music but without becoming an enthusiastic follower. I'm saying this because I'm under the impression that these newer Opeth albums got a somewhat lukewarm reception by many. Older fans were generally disappointed by the stilistic change to a less unique, more derivative music (I can agree with this - the older albums sounded unlike anything else out there, whereas the recent ones make you feel like "this has been done before"), and those new listeners who came from a prog rock, non metal (or at least non extreme metal) background tend to find their music nice, but far from groundbreaking, so it seems they almost never become "massive fans" but just "people who like some of their music" instead.
For what it's worth, I'm among those who think the progressive death metal era is what made Opeth a special band. But I do appreciate their newer albums as well (especially
Pale Communion - their modern masterpiece if you ask me), and it's nice to see that they can still make their fanbase grow with these.