In fact I like it way more than Master's Apprentices.
I absolutely love the circus bit that starts at 5:04.
Pretty much what Black Session said; it has amazing parts but overall it's a little disjointed.
And about the ending, (...) It's not a part of the song, just an extra something for...
When I first listened to the Deliverance album my favourite tracks immediately where the Deliverance track itself, then MA and then AFJ, so exactly the songs that also come on the Lamentations DVD. I had problems enjoying BTPISIO similar to annt and BlackSession. I found it disjointed, the parts where relatively short, didn't really fit together. Also, in my ears the circus part sounded misplaced.
Now, after a while, Deliverance is still my fave track, but Master's Apprentice has lost a bit of its magic while I begin to like BTPISIO better. MA just dwells a bit too much on the - otherwise great - opening riff (disagreeing with Carl Hungus here
) and I think the acoustic part is just a little to simplistic. Whereas I just seem to get into the mood of BTPISIO. Dunno, after a few listens it just starts to grow, it starts to make sense. I think it can be regarded as having two big parts where each part alternates between somehow related heavy and soft sections. The second part contains the circus section. (Perhaps I should do a song structure analysis to deepen the insight
.) I have even started to like especially the circus part.
What I still don't like is the strange kind of growl Mikael uses. It sounds like gurgling, like his mouth is full of bubbles ... or like he drank too much booze before recording it.
And I always skip the "hidden" part, a) because I can't be bothered waiting two and a half minutes for it and b) because I just don't like it that much. Other than that, I really like the song nowadays.