Opeth will be celebrating their twentieth anniversary in the spring of 2010 with a series of six exclusive shows around the globe. Band frontman Mikael Akerfeldt had the following to off on what the expect from the shows:

”I can’t believe it, but…fuck…we’re celebrating 20 years!! 20 years I’ve been in this band, ever since I was 16! It’s insane! As far as I remember, we’ve never had a release party, never celebrated anything officially. Well, now is the time, you hear?

We’ve set up a string of shows, 6 of them actually, around the world. To say that they will be super-exclusive is beyond an understatement!
We’ve discussed the set list already and it seems like we’ll pull out a few songs we’ve never played before, some of which fans all over the world have been demanding to hear for years and years.

Our main agenda for these shows is to have “fun” whilst trying to blow your fucking minds, you could say business as usual, but really…it’ll be special, trust me! I can’t stress enough how exclusive this will be!

We will not add any more shows on top of the 6 that we’ve confirmed already, so please make up your mind early on whether you wanna go or not (of course you fucking do!) as I would assume there’s quite a few of our fans that might be interested in seeing a thing like this.

We’ll spend the better part of January-March rehearsing for this. All to make YOU fucking happy! OK, we’ll be tight, very tight indeed…come see us!
It’s a celebration!!!!

The official press release offered the following additional details:

At each show, the band will perform two sets. The first set will feature the band playing its breakthrough epic Blackwater Park in its entirety. The second set will consist of mixed material from the band’s extensive catalog. The band will be playing for over two hours at carefully selected venues in order to achieve an element of intimacy and exclusivity, and an overall “You had to be there” vibe!”

The dates for the anniversary celebration shows run as follows:

March 30th Stockholm, SWE – Cirkus
April 01st Essen, GER – Lichtburg
April 03rd Paris, FRA – Bataclan
April 05th London, UK – Royal Albert Hall
April 07th New York, NY – Terminal 5
April 09th Los Angeles, CA – The Wiltern