Ugh, I've tried listening to Opeth. My best friend showed me them. He's the one who got me into DT and PT so I trust his taste in music, but I really couldn't listen to Opeth at all.
Don't like the harsh vox? You could try Watershed, it's the album that got me into them.
That is precisely why I can't listen to them, so I'll take your suggestion.
I used to despise growing before I got into Opeth, but I loved the music and his clean vocals so much that I kept listening to them. Opeth introduced me to so much awesome new music, so even though I don't really listen to them a lot anymore (however I'm spinning Morningrise at the moment
), I have a huge lot of respect for them. They helped me discover my two favourite subgenres of metal at the moment (prog metal and melodic death metal), and opened my eyes to much more amazing music (I was mainly listening to thrash before), which is one of the reasons why they are still one of my top 5 bands (the other reason is that I think that Still Life, Blackwater Park, Deliverance and Watershed are some of the greatest prog metal albums of all time).
Even if they won't have such a big influence on you as they had on me, their wonderful music is really worth trying out, and Watershed is a great starting point imo