I'm under no delusions that MK has real interest in the heavy music, nor that it will be returned to really. I rather have them stick to 100% Da,He, and PC than do half and half live when it's probably going through the motions for them. Watershed meh overall to me, as Lotus Eater was the only heavy song that didn't sound forced to me. The more mellow tracks were much better than the heavy ones. But part of my point is taking death growls out of the conversation, and double bass too.
The heavily used unpleasant chords, and more modern distortion is gone. Opeth never wrote standard heavy riffs anyway. But the sound to me is grabbing some Strats, and using the middle pickup through a Vox. He never fully did that during the mellow parts of the past music, so it is a more abrupt change. Storm Corrison still sounded comparable to Opeth production wise. So I'm going beyond just the "no more death metal growls, double bass ahh gone!" type view. Something like Harrlequin forest before the growls is what I'm talking about. No growls, no heavy drumming, but still with some rocking parts. Partly why I like Pale Communion is because some of this was brought back. But it was still produced to my ears through vintage methods purposely.
I just wish he would put Opeth on hiatus, like Steven Wilson did with PT. I have no real belief that will be reunited, especially since his solo stuff is not that far off of PT. Just dialed down the heavy, and dialed up progressive. But for Opeth, it's nearly a different band. If MK wasn't singing, I would think it's an entirely different band. Sure, that's progressive in the definition of whatever. But just retire the band, and make a new one with the same people. He basically has shuffled people as much as Megadeth at this point anyway.