Intervista Opeth (Fredrik Åkesson)

Puoi leggere l’intervista in italiano nella prima pagina

Hi Fredrik, how are you doing?

Pretty good, it’s the tenth show tonight from this tour, it’s been good, many sold-out shows so that’s good, it’s fun.
We have a big new stage setup, so we try to step up the game and do something more advanced, and I think we did it.
Tonight you’ll get the full production.

How was the fan’s reaction to the new music at these first shows?

We played a few songs in Swedish; the album was originally written in Swedish, I think the new songs are going really well.
They’re fun to play, and the crowd seems to be into it.

You’re always playing them in Swedish, at all the shows?

Yeah, we might do later on, maybe when we go to America later on we might change to English, because they seem to like that better, but we haven’t decided.
It’s kind of… fun to not do what the other people want you to do [laughs]

Okay, so you said the album, “In Cauda Venenum”, was originally written in Swedish. Why did you choose to also do a version, the English version, that was different from the way the album had been conceived?

It started with the Swedish idea, Mikael Åkerfeldt had the idea and I remember when I heard the first song, the last track of the album, ‘All Things Must Pass’ [Ed. the actual name of the song is ‘All Things Will Pass’], ‘Allting Tar Slut’ in Swedish, it worked really well, I thought.
It wasn’t such a big change as I thought it would be, when I listened to it, it wasn’t that far away from Opeth with English lyrics, it worked out great, and we realised at an early stage that we had to do it in Swedish as well and it’s kind of cool to have two different release, for the hardcore fans there is a variation, some of the vocal lines will be a bit different, you know.
The English version came about in the studio; we thought it might be difficult to directly translate some of the words, but I think we were kind of lucky that Mikael did the lyrics because a lot of stuff could be directly translated, the meaning is identical, basically.

You were saying you played a lot of sold-out shows, I saw that almost ALL of the shows of the tour are sold-out, and I think this makes it one of your most successful tours ever…

Yeah, I think tonight here at Alcatraz we have more people than ever before, I don’t know if it’s sold-out, but almost, anyway.

Sounds good! What I wanted to ask you is, were you expecting such a success?

No, I don’t think you should expect… we were expecting people would come to the shows, I feel that we have a strong fanbase, a strong support from the fans, it’s fantastic.
But every sold-out show is a bonus, it’s good if we want to step up the game next time, you know, maybe you can go a little bit bigger than the previous time.
I think it’s good for the band, it gives you a good image with the promoters, festivals and stuff.
And it’s of course fun! Crowds have been really great, last night in Germany was fantastic, Munich.

Do you have any favourite song from the new album, or any song that you have a particular connection with?

They’re all very different, and I think they all have a purpose.
I really like to play ‘Heart in Hand’, that was my first favourite, but maybe the strongest song is the last one, ‘All Things Will Pass’, we’ll play it tonight, I’m happy, it’s a kind of an epic song.
The entire goal with the album was to make a more epic album than before.
We also rehearsed another track, the fourth track of the album [Ed. ‘Next of Kin’], that’s a very difficult one to play, and also me and Joakim¸ the keyboard player, we sing a lot, so we had to take some vocal lines from Mikael which is more challenging sometimes when you have to play riffs in a different time signature and you have to be in perfect pitch, but it’s fun.

So, will you change the setlist as the tour goes on?

Not really, we rehearsed two more songs that we are not playing tonight, initially we wanted to play one more, ‘The Moor’ from “Still Life”, but it’s so difficult now since we have thirteen albums, so we have to kill some of your darlings, the setlist would be too long!
We play a bit more than 2 hours now, which is still good, but there are always more songs that you’d like to add. Initially you want to play one from every album, but it’s impossible now, we would have to play a three and a half hour show which would be fun but, maybe a bit too exhausting in such a tight tour, you need breaks in between to rest the voice and stuff.

And I guess that playing for that long every night would be pretty exhausting per se, for all of you.

Yeah, but somehow when you’re on stage time seems to stop existing, you’re not looking at the watch, it’s like going to a different dimension and hopefully for the audience as well.

Like everyone knows, Mikael is a big fan of the ’70s Prog scene, and this has influenced heavily the direction of Opeth’s last few albums. What about you, are you also into the genre, or with Opeth’s new music you are just sort of following the path set by Mikael?

I was a fan of the ‘70s Hard Rock and also Progressive before I joined Opeth, I was a big Rush fan, for instance, Mahogany Rush, Frank Marino, stuff like that, King Crimson and Pink Floyd, I used to listen way before I joined Opeth.
The classic Hard Rock stuff, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin.
Mikael’s knowledge is deeper than that, he introduced me to Italian bands that I now listen to, P.F.M., also lot of the German Krautrock, the British Prog, American Prog, some other ‘70s Rock stuff.
So, since he has a great knowledge it’s really inspiring because I also collect vinyl albums so, it’s good to go out and but vinyls with him because he has good recommendations and he knows when the price is good so you don’t get ripped off.
There are a lot of bands I didn’t know about before I got to know Mikael, so I’m grateful for that.  

Before the interview started we were talking about the Opeth beer: how did the idea of making your own beer come up?

We did it before with a British micro-brewery, so me and Martin Axenrot went over to Leeds.
Then our manager approached us with this idea, he got in contact with a Swedish brewery called “Heavy MetAle”, which is pretty brilliant, and they had a cool approach, they wanted to promote the music because they are fans of Metal.
What they did was having the albums as theme for the beer, so we had the “Red Rocks”, so you had the album cover, you had a QR code that you could scan and listen to the album on Spotify, that’s kind of cool.
So, we did the red ale for “Red Rocks”, we did “Sorceress”, an IPA, and we also wanted to do a proper pilsner, like a German pils because there are a lot of IPAs now, there’s this trend, and it’s nice to also have a “regular” beer, and that was for “Heritage”.
We’ll play the last gig of this tour in Copenhagen and they’re coming to the gig, so we’ll sell our own beer at the gig which is cool.

When bands release these kinds of products, you can sometimes read on the internet people complaining, “They should focus more on the music instead of this” and things like that. I guess it doesn’t really take that much time from you, it’s not like you brew the beer yourselves.

Yeah, and also the fact that we did it when we had off time, we were off for a year, so we had a lot of time, so that was okay.
But, once again, me and Martin Axenrot went to the brewery and tried the different beer types, we really wanted to be involved in it.
We also lowered the percentage in beers, initially they wanted to have them stronger but I like to drink a few beers when I drink beer, but if they are too strong you get too wasted which could be dangerous.
Like, these 7% beers, I don’t see the point, really. Maybe if you drink one, but if you are at show you drink four and then…
So, I mean, we are careful not to do too much side stuff, but beer is something that almost everybody loves, so it feels legit, we are not making dildos and shit like that like some other bands do.

When with “Heritage” you switched style and moved to a Prog Rock without growl vocals some fans complained about the new direction, and I guess you might have lost a few fans and gained some others. Do you think today people are over it, they have accepted that this is who Opeth are today?

I don’t read everything on the internet, but on certain forums you’ll always have that complaint, especially on Blabbermouth, they complain about everything, it’s kind of fun, actually.
But we still play that era of Opeth live, and we still enjoy playing it, and I think Mikael growl are more guttural than ever, really.
You know, we still love it, but Mikael is the main songwriter and he is very artistic, he doesn’t like to repeat his sound, and neither do we, we’re kind of staying on this path but I’m not sure it’s ruled out forever, it might come back, in a different way.
I can understand some fan, but there are still a lot of old school fans that appreciate both types of songs, and when it comes to the live gigs I think it’s quite interesting to have the blend between these two, it’s a good dynamic in a live setting.

And it’s nice to have a bit more variation instead of 2 hours straight of super heavy stuff.

But then again, the older Opeth stuff with the growl always had some more calm stuff in those songs, it’s always been a bit like Yin and Yang kind of thing, and in a way there’s still that, but in a different way.

Is this something you ever discussed with him, the return of the growl in the future, or is it something that, anyway, you think is likely, or just possible, it might come back?

If it’d come back, I think it would have to be… I know Mikael well and if I were to question him about it there would be less chances for this to happen, he likes to do the opposite.
If it happens it has to be him who comes up with it naturally, and feels like he wants to do it.
But, there has been a little bit of talk about bringing it back on some… on the “Pale Communion” album, he had an idea to bring back the growl for one song, without anyone asking him about it so it has almost happened.

So, let him do his thing and, maybe…

Exactly!

Awesome! That was my last question, if you have a final message for our readers, please go ahead.

I hope you enjoy the new album, “In Cauda Venenum“, and we are happy to play here tonight!
I wish we could play more gigs in Italy, and thanks for the support!

Davide Sciaky