The live sound is almost solely down to the venue, gear and the live sound engineer. I think up to a recent point Opeth must have just been dealing with the shoddy in-house engineers that seem to come with every shitty godforsaken venue around. There are too many guys out there with no clue as to what they're doing.
I think in recent times the label must've paid for the band to start getting their own personal live sound guy who can give them a consistently good mix, no matter where they play.
