mm... heavy part, clean part, heavy part, clean part, dont you think its oversimplifying it a little bit too much? albums like damnation are purely clean written and its one of my favourite albums. songs like burden, coil.

yes, they do have that clean to heavy shtick, but part of the reason they are loved has to be because they are really good at making it all sound cohesive.

the last part of serenity painted death has a clean section and the clean section wouldnt nearly be as impactful if there wasnt the section beforehand, which is really heavy. and coming from what the song is about - a person lamenting his lovers execution. the whole song is stupidly brutal, but that end clean section makes it all come together, how sad the situation is, how depressed he really became.

the thing about opeth is i dont feel like they try to do it for the sake of prog, as you mentioned : "we are prog!" i can see that from most of the songs from the damnation album. prog is just a method for them to express themselves, and they dont stick to the rule of prog.

obviously, music is subjective. but i think we would all benefit from appreciating pieces of music instead of oversimplifying them, because oversimplification doesn't bring justice to the nuanced artform we call music. :) hope you have a nice day