This is from an interview with Michael:

"I didn't have an ending for the song; there was a few options to end a nice song like that. Either you end on a high note with a nice chord or a fade out or something. But I just came up with the idea that we should end it in a freaky way and I'm just basically playing this ending lick on the nylon string guitar and I told Fredrik to de-tune the guitar in real time as I was playing. So obviously it sounds very ugly but that was the whole purpose. We didn't know if it would work or not but it did."

"They can play this for an hour, and I'd not complain."

watershed is the most underrated and my favorite album of theirs.

"I can't really tell what key they're in. They're using functional chords in non functional ways"

Welcome to Prog Doug 😂

I am so envious of this man right now, I would give anything to hear Burden as if it were the first time.

4:28 'Keyboard starts to solo'
Jon Lord: Well done, my kids

I love the detuning part. It adds some tension right at the end but I actually enjoy it a lot lol

It amazes me how twenty to thirty years ago, metal music, and rock music in general, were actively persecuted and picketed by religious types, and here we are today watching this gentleman listening to it in a church with a wonderfully positive attitude towards it. Progress.

I love how Doug can emulate what's being played in milliseconds.

The interplay between Mikael Åkerfeldt and Fredrik Åkesson's solos is absolutely magnificent. Not taking anything away from Peter Lindgren as a musician, but Opeth could not pull something like that off when he was in the band.

They could play this for an hour and I would not complain.  The most succinct appreciation for that four-chord progression around 6:00. Well said!

Opeth - "Windowpane" is magnificent if you like this version of Opeth. I prefer the non-death metal version of Opeth as well.

This song is what I call “Painfully Beautiful”

easily my pick for the most underrated and emotional opeth song. this one hits me deep. always makes me tear up.

I was just waiting to the end of the song to see you freaking out hahahah.

The imperfection of de-tuning makes this song perfect

7:05 Absolutely beautiful accompaniment by you playing along. Just wonderful.

I love everything about this reaction! from the intense listening to figure out the chord progressions, to the lovely riffing with the guitars, the (expected) utter bafflement of the detuning part to the rage-quit of the piano. that was awesome, sir!

For the outro, it really helps with the album's feeling of anxiety. It's a feeling from listening to the album but not the songs individually. The intro song Coil has a low rumbling that builds into the intro of heir apparent where you get a real oppressive hit from the guitars, at the end of heir apparent there is a high pitched tone that carries tension into lotus eater, which starts with bizarre humming and a bizzare intro to the song, the jazzy instrumental in lotus eater has a tense feeling and definitely keeps the listener on their toes, lotus eater ends with a load of voices talking (I don't know if they're swedish sorry) that for me came off as indistinguishable and kind of scary, like a schizophrenic nightmare, which then transitions to burden with a light sigh. Burden ends with the detuning to really catch the listener off guard, considering that burden is very light song in comparison, which then immediately transitions to the hard hitting intro to Porcelain Heart. Porcelain heart then ends with the distorted guitar fading away into the relatively chill first half of hessian peel, again like burden luring the listener into a false sense of security, which then explodes into proper death metal like heir apparent and lotus eater. The last bit of tension (and therefore anxiety) is between hessian peel and hex omega, with a repetitive tone playing which then explodes into hex omega's intro.

As a musician you know when you have discovered a great piece when you have to play along with it.