OPETH
by Steve Walker/photos by Scott Olivenbaum
LINKS:
opeth.com
I’ve been sitting here fighting a very sluggish brain to try and come up with a decent introduction for this interview. Ask any writer and they will tell you that this is usually the hardest part of the process. In this case it is slightly more difficult than usual because of whom the interview was with. Opeth is one of my personal favorites. A week doesn’t go by that I am not listening to one of their albums, all of which show a band which is constantly growing and unafraid to follow their musical ideas. I had the extreme pleasure to speak with Mikael Akerfeldt, lead singer/songwriter, before the band played in North Carolina. Here is the result of a fan-boy getting his wish. Forgive me if I gush just a little too much. I was nervous, dammit.
MIKAEL AKERFELDT: Hello.
STEVE WALKER: How ya’ doin’ Mike?
MA: I’m fine. How are you?
SW: Very good thank you.
MA: I’m actually a little bit sick.
SW: I’m sorry to hear that.
MA: Yeah, well I’m always sick on the road. Never sick back home, always on the road, but I got some pills, great stuff you have here called Contact or something.
SW: Well I hope you feel better, man.
MA: Well, yeah, I don’t feel that bad, it’s just that my throat has been fucked up that’s all.
SW: Has being ill affected your singing at all?
MA: Ah, not so much. It’s weird you know, it hasn’t been so bad, sometimes it hurts, but I sing okay anyways. I only lost my voice once on tour and that was awful, but on this tour it’s been okay so far.
SW: Cool.
MA: Sometimes I even sing better when I have a cold.
SW: Yeah, cause it adds a little bit of a raspy tone to your voice?
MA: Yeah, it sounds more emotional when I sing clean, even though my nose is all clogged up.
SW: So how is the tour going?
SW: Yeah wait until you come up here man to New York.
MA: Oh, you’re in New York?
SW: Yeah. The weather has been kind of crazy up here, y’know? One day it’s 10 degrees the next day its 40.
MA: Yeah, that’s weird. That’s going to be a good show in New York, the one at Irving.
SW: Yeah, I saw you guys when you came around over the summer.
MA: Yeah, we were there twice I think, during 2003.
SW: I saw you guys the second time in July on the Damnation tour, and I have to say you guys just blew me away.
MA: Thanks man. It was a bit different that tour than all the others.
SW: Just because it was all the softer stuff?
MA: Usually we play more of the heavier stuff then the softer songs. We decided that that tour was going to be in support of the Damnation album, so we played all the soft numbers, in fact we played the entire album plus some older songs, and it was pretty cool, to do something different like that.
SW: That was probably one of the most relaxing shows I’ve ever been to.
MA: Yeah, even the most die hard death metal fans seemed to like those shows.
SW: I’ve always enjoyed how you guys seem to balance the music out between the hard stuff and the ballads, like on Still Life you threw in “Benighted”, Damnation being all ballads, and the instrumental track on Deliverance. Is that a conscious choice on your part?
MA: I try not to think too much about whether the songs are going to be heavy or soft while I’m writing them, it’s just how the song turns out. Obviously for Damnation I wanted the entire album to be soft, and on Deliverance we had “Fair Judgment” which is fairly soft.
SW: I recently just watched the Lamentations DVD, and I saw what you guys went to in the studio to record those albums, and you mention that you plan on rehearsing before going into the studio for the next album. Are you still in that mindset where you will rehearse first and then record?
MA: We have to do that. We’ve been doing 3 or 4 albums now without rehearsing, and we’ve pretty much come to the end of that experiment so to speak. Next time I want more input from the other guys in a way. I want them to know the songs better so they can play what they want to. Y’know with Damnation and Deliverance it was a case of me telling them what I had in mind and they pretty much played from my original idea. For the next album I want them to make up everything pretty much themselves, y’know if I have an idea and they choose to do that, that’s fine but I want them to be 100% secure with each song so that they can contribute more to the final thing.
SW: Even though you’re done with the improvisation within the studio, are you going to keep using that feel during rehearsals?
MA: Oh yeah, definitely.
I know me, y’know so I think what I’m
going to try to do is have the basic song structures written, but it
always ends up with us improvising a lot in the studio and doing things
in the heat of the moment, which is really the beauty of doing stuff
the way we have for the last couple of albums, but it got too hectic
on Deliverance and Damnation, so much so that it wasn’t fun to
record. It was a pain in the ass really, so I want the next album to
be more controlled so that we are more prepared.
SW: It’s always good to come into something with more than just an idea of what you are doing.
MA: Exactly. You can always improve things I think. Even though I am 100% satisfied with all the albums we’ve done without rehearsing, I think we are going to try and do it differently next time.
SW: How’s Martin (Lopez) feeling?
MA: He’s feeling well. He’s
much better. He had a problem at the start of the tour which has been
bugging him for quite some time
and he suffered panic attacks and stress and he was very depressed and
all that stuff so he had to go back home, and he missed the first three
gigs.
SW: Oh that’s terrible.
MA: But he went to see a psychologist and they told him he’s got something that is in his family. Some kind of thing with his blood that gets his heart beating fast and then he gets depressed and all that stuff. So I think he was very relaxed by knowing what it is, because he was literally thinking that he was going insane. And now he knows what his sickness is and he can be helped and he got some medication and he’s going to see a psychologist on a regular basis when we get back home, and he’s much happier now and back to normal pretty much.
SW: I’m glad to hear it. He’s an amazing drummer.
MA: Yes, and y’know we were all very concerned about him and we’re supporting him 100% for this, and if it means canceling shows, that’s fine because at the end of the day we’ve been doing so much work anyways the last couple of times it’s amazing that all of us are pretty much sane.
SW: And you just want to watch out for your friend too, I’m sure.
MA: Exactly, exactly. And that is what really matters y’know, a band can handle canceling a few gigs, but if someone were to kill themselves or something it would be obviously disastrous, not only for the band, but also for our personal friendships.
SW: So how much longer are you going to be on the road for?
MA: This is our last extensive tour until we put out the next album. It’s another 2 or 3 weeks of this tour and then we have one day off back home, and then we are going out again to Greece and Hungary and Jordan. Then we have 7 gigs in Australia and we will be done.
SW: So after the Australia dates you’ll be done for the year?
MA: Yeah, we might do the odd festival here and there. We are doing one for sure, a Swedish festival, but we are doing that because I was pretty much going there anyways, and Judas Priest are headlining, but apart from that, nothing until the next album.
SW: Are you working up towards the next album while you’re on the road?
MA: I can’t do that. I have to rest a little bit before I start working. I am working on one song that I’ve been working on between tours. It’s too early to say really what it’s going to be like; what I can say is it’s going to be like it’s been before, a mix between heavy and soft material, except the heavier part will be groovier maybe.
SW: Groovy?
MA: Yeah, with more like a swing to it, and also have some ultra extreme parts as well as some of the beautiful metal bits.
SW: I look forward to it man, I can’t wait to hear it. You guys are a band that I actually wait with bated breath for when I hear a new album is coming out or that you’re going on tour.
MA: Thanks, man.
SW: No problem. It’s that nice feeling of the music. It really touches me.
MA: Well we’ve never cared about anything else than the music, so we’ve never cared how we present ourselves, and I think that shows as well on the DVD and the documentary, because we basically look like a bunch of totally geeky bums. And that’s really what we wanted, we don’t want to look cool, y’know we don’t want people to think that we’re cool; we just want to be recognized for our music and dedication to the music.
SW: Which is the way it should be. So this is the last tour for the Damnation album?
MA: Well, it’s not really a tour for the Damnation album; it’s more like a tour for everything we’ve done really. We’ve been playing both heavy and soft material on this tour. The last tour we did was all mellow and now we are playing 5 of our fastest most extreme songs, and we’ve pulled out a few songs that we’ve never played live before.
SW: I heard you guys have been playing “The Moor” live.
MA: Yeah, and it’s been fantastic y’know. I was worried because it’s very intricate and pretty exhausting to play but it’s a good live song I think.
SW: I hope you guys are going to play it when you come up to New York.
MA: Oh, we’re going to play it, no worries.
SW: That’s great. On the DVD you guys talk about the Martins bringing in a couple of different influences as far as world music goes and I hear that a lot on the albums, a lot of jazz influenced stuff, is that something that just happens or is it a conscious choice, I mean do you hear a nice piece of jazz music or something and say, “I want it to have this type of feel to it”?
MA: It depends. It’s hard to say for me, as the writer, to say what I get influenced by. For instance, we did the song called “Bleak” on the Blackwater Park album. I did the main riffs like, 5 minutes after Martin played me this track by a Lebanese artist. As far as the Martins go, they can pull something out like a rhythm that is in music that I’m not really listening to. Even though I’m the writer of the music, I want them to add something to the music that I wouldn’t come up with.
SW: Right, which adds to a good band dynamic as well when you’re playing, the musicianship reflects it.
SW: One final question, ‘cause I just gotta, how’s your record
collection?
MA: It’s big. I still collect loads. I’ve blown close to $1,000 on records on this tour already, and I’ve still got loads back home. I’m obsessed y’know? That’s my drive, I mean I don’t do any drugs or anything, but buying records is pretty much my drug.
SW: I can relate, I’m a big comic fan, myself, so that is my poison. Any goodies that you found, anything that you were really jonesing for?
MA: Well I found something that’s not music. It’s a recording of Anton Xander Lavey from 1967, Black Mass on vinyl. I like to have those kind of spoken word, I think they’re cool, and it cost me like 100 bucks. But I buy so much I can’t keep track of all of it.
SW: Thanks Mikael. I look forward to seeing you guys when you come to New York.
MA: Yeah definitely. See you there man.