OPETH

Deep Thoughts & Inner Feelings with Mikael Akerfeldt.

With a new guitar player on deck, and a cycle of extensive touring all around the world, Sweden’s Opeth are back again in the States just months after wrapping up the Prog-Nation tour that hit South Florida this past May, days before the release of their most recent album, ‘Watershed’.

RAG was able to knit pick at the core thoughts of Mikael Akerfeldt, as front man and main song writer for Opeth, as well as just ‘Mikael’, a happily married husband and father of two. He expresses his feelings regarding the departure of former guitarist Peter Lindgren and his fears concerning his family.

Your last U.S. tour ended just days before the release of ‘Watershed’, what is the reaction of the fans to the new material now that the album is out?

They were good from the beginning, actually. What I think is surprising and positive, is that our fans seem to want to hear a lot of new material and they are always yelling out new songs. We are only playing two new songs on this tour, and they are going down real well, as they did from the first time we played them. It’s well received. Everyone seems to like the album. We try to mix it up. Even though it’s a tour promoting ‘Watershed’, of course, it is also a tour promoting every album, I guess. So we play all sorts of stuff, and not too much of the new one. Maybe we should actually have another new track in there, to be honest. But we haven’t really had much time to rehearse.

With such intensive touring with the new line up, do you feel the chemistry of the band is stronger?

It was always strong and there was always good chemistry between us. Axe [Martin Axenrot, drums] has been with us for a few years now, so it feels like he has always been there, in a way. Same with Fredrik [Akesson, guitars] to be honest, he has only been with us for a year and a half and it feels like we have always been together, you know? We have a great vibe amongst ourselves, we are all good friends. We play better and we sound better than ever, I think. So it’s really good, actually. It feels even though we’ve got long tours, and sh*t loads of gigs we’re always pretty consisted. Even when we don’t do a good show, it’s still a good show. We always deliver.

You recently recorded a video for the song “Burden”; how did that go?

It’s the same director as the first video, in the same style, which I like. We didn’t really have any input on either video, to be honest. I trust him, I know him, I know his preference when it comes to films, photography and art and what he likes. The “Porcelain Heart” video was more like a negative, type of triangular drama love story. This one is almost like connecting to “My Arms, Your Hearse”, a ghost love story. That’s the way I saw it. It’s also in a castle, so we’re like the ‘castle metal band’. It was beautiful, actually. There is a lot more performing from the band in this video. I really like it!

You chose Axe’s girlfriend Nathalie Lorichs to duet on your song “Coil”, did you ever consider asking an already established female singer instead?

No, I didn’t have that idea to do the song with a female singer until I heard Nathalie singing, to be honest. Her and Axe have an acoustic band and she sings, and they played me a couple of songs and I loved her voice. Maybe it’s the way she looks when she sings. She lingers on every word and it’s very passionate sounding. I heard the song and asked her to come and try. It could have been sh*t or it could have been great and it turned out great, I think. When we demoed it, I was almost crying when she sang it. It was so good so I asked her to be on the record. I didn’t want it to become a gimmick, you know? So I wouldn’t go out asking Nightwish’s singer, or Whitney Houston, or someone famous. I didn’t want it to become like a “thing”. It was more in the best interest of the song, as far as I am concerned. And I didn’t want it to be taken out of proportion, like “Opeth has a female singer they are trying to tap in to this or that crowd”. I just thought the song would benefit from her voice, really.

Now that there has been time to let everything sink in, is there anything about ‘Watershed’ that you would change?

No, I never want to change anything about an album. Even if there are f*ck ups and flaws and stuff I don’t particularly like, it’s behind us. I listened to it a lot once it was done and I knew it was good, so no. I don’t want to change anything about any album we’ve done. It’s an imprint in time; it’s kind of hard to explain. It’s the way it’s supposed to be. I don’t like bands that re-record albums, I don’t understand it.

Clean vocals play a dominant role in this album, do you feel more comfortable singing clean or that it is better suited with Opeth’s music?

I let the song decide what kind of vocals it should have. I love to scream, still. I love it. But I also love to sing. These songs come out in a way that those certain parts I just know would be better with clean vocals. And I guess there were more of those parts in this album, but that’s not a sign for our future recordings at all, I don’t think. I would guess they would be 50/50 or maybe more, it’s very hard to say. But it’s not like we’re moving away from the screams at all, really. It’s just that if I happen to write 7 or 8 really heavy songs, there is a good chance there will be more screams on the next one. But I can’t really force it, you know? It just turns out the way it does.

Many lyricists and poets with a similar writing style to yours are inspired best when they are sad, or depressed. When you write your lyrics, do you find that you write best in some kind of dark state of mind?

No, not really. I wrote all of the lyrics for the album in one night, and while I had some ideas I saved anytime I came up with a line, I changed everything. It was good for me to write them, I had a lot of inspiration, but I don’t need to be in a bad mood. I am generally like this [so-so gesture], most of the time. Maybe indifferent, but that sounds really boring. I have outbursts. I can get really angry really quick. I never hit people or anything but just outbursts, you know? I can also have dips in my mood and become really blank. Like nothing is wrong, but that won’t help me in my creativity, to be honest. And if I feel like that I can’t do anything. I can’t find peace or inspiration. When I am like that, I am a terrible person to be around. Not that I am mean, but I am completely boring; a ghost. But most of the time I’m feeling pretty good.

A few things that inspired me where a few deaths in my circle of friends, I guess you could say, and also the band situation, like Peter and Lopez leaving. It was pretty emotional. I based three songs on a person that died, which inspired me to write, “Hessian Peel”, “Hex Omega”, and “Burden” which are all somewhat connected, and to a certain extent, “Porcelain Heart”, too. It’s just things in my surrounding. And normally I come up with fictional subjects and characters. That makes it easier. It’s a necessary evil to write lyrics for me, because you have to have them. Some times I don’t want to write and I force myself to, but these I wanted to write.

Most people say having children changes their life in a positive way, how would you say it inspired you as a musician?

Not so much musically, but lyrically. I love them more than anything, of course. It’s a contradiction that they inspire me to write depressive things, but it’s because you change in that sense that you feel more worried and you’re more afraid and you think the world is horrible and that people are disgusting. Like all of a sudden I’m walking with, let’s say, Melinda [first daughter] in the town and I just want to shelter her from anything remotely bad. I also became more aware of my own mortality. While I’ve never been one of those guys like, ‘Whoa I’m going to die!” I became more concerned about myself because I want to live to see…

To see them grow up?

Yeah… I wouldn’t say it’s a rude awakening, but it’s somewhat of a wake up call when you have kids. You want to be a better person; you want the world to be better. It sounds like f*ckin’ Bono, but that’s the way it feels. While before I could be indifferent watching the news, now I can start crying. When say, I think of my wife and kids going somewhere, I’ll think like, “car accident” and can become totally obsessed with what if something happens, especially if I am away on tour. I am so afraid of everything now. I guess it’s the same for everyone who has kids. It’s horrible, in a way. I hate that I feel this way. I feel that I am overly protective about them; it can consume me if something happened to them, to the point where I wouldn’t know what to do. Most days I’m pretty cool as long as I get to talk to them everyday and see that they are ok. To be honest I want my wife to be in the house locked up with them and have the groceries delivered. But I know that’s not the way of course. But it worries me.

Would you say the relationship with your wife has a similar influence to you musically or lyrically?

“Coil” is slightly inspired by our relationship, but not really. But because of the fact that I’m going to talk about lyrics to, for example, people like you, part of me doesn’t want to write about stuff that is too personal, while another part of me wants to write about that because it makes everything so easy for me. It makes everything so easy to explain, yet I don’t want to talk about some of the lyrics I’ve done. But I wouldn’t say that she inspired me in lyrics, but maybe in writing. Like say when she was pregnant with Melinda, the mood was so calm, so easy, just relaxed. We were waiting for Melinda to come. I was writing the ‘Ghost Reveries’ album at the time and it was like our own personal utopia in the apartment that we lived in at the time. It was beautiful, very relaxing.

You were forced to cancel several shows and festivals in Europe this summer due to you getting ill. What happened?

Yes, we canceled four shows because I got the chickenpox from my kids. I didn’t think you could have it twice but you can if you don’t get it all out of your system when you are young, and apparently I didn’t. So I was on a sick leave for two weeks, but I was well after ten days. I started doing shows again when I looked somewhat presentable, because I basically looked like a zombie for a while. But for 48 hours it was unbearable, I even had chickenpox in my throat so every time I swallowed it was like ‘Ahh!’ There was really nothing to do and I was just walking in circles around my house. I had a bit of a high fever and obviously itching pox all over, which I had this cold crème for but I don’t think it works because when it dries you become like a mummy. I also had to take a lot of medication for it because you can have lots of complications when you are older and it can be dangerous. But one day I was just sitting around and every hour I realized I felt better, so my wife gave me make up and I headed out to do the next weekend of festivals, but I didn’t use it because it wasn’t that bad, although I still had scars, you should have seen me!

Very soon you will release a new live DVD called ‘The Roundhouse Tapes’, can you give us a bit more information about that?

It’s been out on audio for a while, and is massively delayed. It’s from one of the last shows we did with Peter at the Roundhouse in Camden, London. It’s a round place where trains would be brought in and turned around. It was very active in the 60’s. All the psychedelic bands like The Doors and Floyd played there, so it’s a legendary venue and it has been closed for many years. It reopened and we were one of the first bands to go in there, so we figured it would be a good place to record this DVD. It also holds like 2, 800 people or something. So the show was basically a potpourri of our discography. It’s filmed in HD if you like that kind of stuff. It’s a pretty big production, to be honest. We brought in a screen to have some images showing as we are playing, because we’re not the most animated band on stage, really, and it looks good. But to me, I’m like, ‘eh’, it’s old. I don’t even care. It’s not even Fredrik in there. But I think it’s a nice little artifact for Opeth fans. It’s a pretty good performance. I think the best thing about the DVD is some of the fan interviews that we did. Because we had a camera team outside of the building interviewing fans as they went in, and as they came out. By that time they were pissed drunk, so it’s a lot of fun stuff from the fans. There is an interview with the band, some sound check footage, which to me is totally uninteresting, but maybe some fans like it. There is some artwork in there from Travis Smith who has done our artwork for the past ten or so years. It’s a good package, but as I said, I feel that it is in the past and we’ve been waiting for it to be released for such a long time, but now it’s finally coming out and will be out by the time we come back home.

After this tour wraps up what’s on Opeth’s agenda?

We have a European tour starting in mid-November to mid-December. We are just now negotiating about another North American tour as support as well as doing another short two-week long headlining, big production tour, and bringing out a few cool bands to come with us. The support tour is a long f*cking tour but it will be good for our exposure, I guess. Nothing is confirmed yet. If we do it, I’m probably going to fly my wife and kids out mid-tour.