When I was a broke, aspiring journalist in 2005, I spent a few dead-end days chasing stories for the local paper in Warwick and sleeping in a dodgy motel with a shared bathroom (the kind of place that seems to be begging you to leave). On my last day, word spread of a vicious storm brewing in the west, so I packed the car to attempt to outrun it. Cunningham’s Gap was closed, forcing me north through Toowoomba as lightning spiderwebbed across the sky to my left and a long black arm of cloud seemed to flip me off as the rain started down.

Opeth’s ‘Deliverance’ was the soundtrack. The loud, menacing, winding, hypnotic opus. I’d heard it dozens of times, but that drive was a revelation. Having this is as the soundtrack to Armageddon seemed particularly electrifying. That was the night I really got Opeth.

Now, 20 years hence, heading up to Brisbane to see the band for maybe the fourth or fifth time, I chase the same feeling and wonder if the band can still conjure the same apocalyptic magic.

But first, local legends, Caligula’s Horse is here to warm things up. Tonight’s set-up is… odd. Or at least unusual for a metal show: assigned seating on the floor, with general admission relegated to the mezzanine. For a band more accustomed to a sea of headbangers and the odd windmill, it could have been awkward. A few shows into the tour though, these fellas just shrug it off and get on with a set of lengthy opuses, emotionally charged, but tight as all Hell.

There is no easing in, starting with the hulking chords of ‘Dream the Dead’, the sweet melodic vocals of Jim Grey cut through the room, a clean presence amongst the controlled chaos in the mix, building atmosphere so the bigger chorus (though, what is a chorus in a prog-rock/metal track) hit that much harder.

The band are short on time tonight, but Jim lets us know the band is celebrating the 10-year anniversary of third album, ‘Bloom’, drawing plenty of response from the cluster of Caligula’s Horse shirts scattered through the front rows. Then it’s straight into the title-track and ‘Marigold’, the band locked in and sharp as knives.

Under a wide-brimmed hat, Mikael Åkerfeldt leadsOpeth on stage. No greetings or even a cheeky nod to the crowd, just a quiet count-in before slamming into ‘§1’ from the latest album ‘The Last Will and Testament’. The lights, the churning guitars, and the still absurdly deep growls Åkerfeldt can still summon, set the tone immediately. Then it’s a hard pivot back in time with ‘Master’s Apprentices’ and the haunting, beautiful and pummelling, ‘The Leper Affinity’.

Åkerfeldt is in a chatty mood. He riffs on the venue’s seating plan and tells us the band’s management is trying to market them as a “sophisticated” act, or maybe just assumes their fans are lazy. A few punters take this as permission to spill into the aisles, whipping hair and throwing the horns, before security calmly ushers them back to their designated areas.

At this point, I have to admit, all mentions of stage antics are estimates and assumptions filtered through the goddamn Viking planted directly in front of me. This is the downside of designated seating at a sold-out metal show. There is no escape, no angle and no mercy. If a 6’7, time-displaced Norse warlord sits in front of you, prepare to experience the concert as an audio drama with strobe lighting.

Back on stage, ‘§7’ makes an early appearance, complete with the reading of the Will passages on a backing track, punctuating the journey of entwining soundscapes, taking the general atmosphere into séance territory. The band threads together choral swells, death metal church and prog detours, pulling from every era of their now 30-year career.

Retina-searing spotlights cut through the crowd as projections of winter forests, hellscapes and B-movie horror flicker across the screen behind, each track tightly curated to its own visual mood. ‘The Devil’s Orchard’, from Heritage, is particularly well received from the slightly fallow period of deeper avant-garde prog in the early 2010s.

Introduced as a “death metal song”, ‘Demon of the Fall’, now 27 years old, shows how early Opeth established their signature sound. Not really verses or choruses, but movements shifting through fragile acoustic passages and sudden violent drop-offs. It never really knows what it wants to be or where it’s heading and it’s a blueprint for everything that’s come since, in one 7-minute outburst, and it still sounds fresh and ground-breaking as it rings through Fortitude Valley tonight.

The encore of ‘Deliverance’. It had to be. There is no universe where they walk off without playing it. The aisles fill again and security let them. The band, the crowd, and the purest distillation of everything Opeth do so well: melody and menace, precision and technical brilliance, with that final high guitar pattern and syncopated drum onslaught that feels like arrhythmia. And somehow, 20 years on, it’s the same feeling as the night in ’05. The world shaking, the air full of noise, and Opeth at the centre, orchestrating it all.