If you havent checked it out, youre missing out big time imho
I have all Dickinson's solo works, those two I've mentioned just happen to be my favourite. And I agree that Accident of Birth is very good.
That Opeth cut was also excellent--Blackwater Park is on my list if I ever get a job and have money again.
Besides Blackwater Park I'd also recommend Still Life from 1999. It's probably their most compact one, great from start to finish, perfectly balanced and it has probably the best sounding acoustic guitars of all their records.
Here's the first song from Still Life, The Moor:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XijodYFQbrY
Some of the texts (not the lyrics) in video are pretty silly, but the song is great.
The transition starting as 5:32 is one of my all time favourite moments in heavy music.
Here's the mellow song from the same album, Benighted:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjtZW_FCSTo
I love the atmosphere of this one!
Oh, and while I'm at their softer side, I'm adding what I consider to be the best three songs from their fully mellow output, Damnation:
Windowpane -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IzLDT73bkk
The guitar solo section in the second half is just beautiful, well, eh, everything in this song is.
In My Time Of Need -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x6YclsLHN0
A bit of pinkfloydian mood here.
To Rid The Disease -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBgoiLiNuXg
Chorus of this one gives me some serious chills.
Well, I'm ending the post with something from the more typical Opeth's repertoire. It's another song from Blackwater Park, Bleak:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BdZ1xFysF8
A lot of great moments in this one.
Along with Devin Townsend, Mikael Akerfeldt (the mind behind Opeth) is my favourite contemporary rock artist. He has great compositional skills, is a very good guitarist, his growls are state-of-art ones (I usually don't like such vocals) and his clean vocals are one of the best in genre. Although he's sometimes slightly under tune, the emotion more than makes up for it.
Well, that's all for my Opeth post
.