Interview with Mikael Åkerfeldt of Opeth

February 24, 2006 at Webster Theater, Hartford, CT.

A few hours before the Opeth/Dark Tranquility/Devin Townsend Band show at the Webster on February 24, Mikael Åkerfeldt of Opeth was kind enough to sit down and answer some questions that Handsome Dan and Tobey hastily scribbled as they zipped down I-91 towards Hartford. Sitting at the deserted bar counter after sound check, Åkerfeldt, puffing away on Marlboro Lights, took a minute from surfing the metal message boards on his laptop and chatted with the WNHU DJs in a candid (or maybe just unprofessional) interview.

 Look for the actual interview to air during the metal shows on WNHU next weekend.

 
Handsome Dan: This is Handsome Dan and Tobey from The Creator Has A Mastertape and Metal ‘til Midnight on WNHU, West Haven, 88.7 FM. We’re here with Mikael Åkerfeldt of Opeth, and he’s agreed to answer a few questions for us and stuff like that.

Mikael Åkerfeldt: (pause) Yeah. (laughs)

HD: How’re you doing?

MÅ: I’m good.

HD: So, for the listeners who don’t necessarily know Opeth very well, how are you involved with the band? What do you do?

MA: I’m the guitar player and vocalist, I also write I think pretty much all the material these days. So, I’m the boss.

HD: He’s the boss of the band.

MA: I’m the boss. (laughs)

Tobey: I would obey somebody who growls like that.

MÅ: Yeah, I actually don’t tell them off with the growling voice, but…

T: But you should. (laughs)

MÅ: Yeah, maybe I should start doing that. Get some more discipline.

T: Alright, so…Going to start off with a big one: What exactly prompted the change in labels to Roadrunner from Music for Nations?

MÅ: Basically it was we didn’t have a label anymore because Music for Nations was, uh, put to death pretty much. It was a big corporate merger between two big record labels, one of which owned Music for Nations, and I guess it wasn’t making enough money for the Britney Spears executives. So they just, you know, let the label go, and whatever… fired everyone.

T: Wasn’t William Hung on that label, too?

MÅ: Say again?

T: Wasn’t William Hung on that label, too? You know, the Asian guy that tried out for American Idol?

MÅ: Eh…I don’t know. (Laughs) Maybe. But we went for Roadrunner because they seemed like the best record label for us. It’s as simple as that, really.

T: Yeah, they’re pretty big in the world of metal. How has that change affected the way you deal with business? Like, touring and stuff. How has that made a difference? Are they bigger or smaller?

MÅ: Well, I don’t know, the tour, they don’t have as much to do with the tours, but obviously through gaining some record sales we have more people coming to the shows then we did before, which is a good thing, but they have little to do with the tours, really. You know, we were doing some quite good tours before we signed to Roadrunner, and since then it’s just gone up obviously because of record sales, and, I guess us working hard.

T: And now you have that nifty music video on MTV2.

MÅ: Yeah, exactly.

T: I don’t get it though. What does the rest of the video, aside from the performance, have to do with the song?

MÅ: I don’t think it has much to do with the song, to be honest. (Laughs)

T: I thought it was kind of goofy.

MÅ: Yeah, you know, it’s not one of the best videos I’ve seen in my life, but it’s not one of the worst. It’s just a metal video as far as I’m concerned.  We didn’t have any input on it, because we don’t really know…we’ve never done a video before. So, whatever, you know, as long as there was no fuckin’…Donald Duck jumping around, I’d be happy with pretty much anything. But it was shambles… that whole day of recording the video, it was a big mess, so I can’t be bothered with the end result. Even though I’m not unhappy with it, it’s not like I’m super proud of it, either.

T: Yeah, it just gets your name out there.

MÅ: Yeah, that’s what it is, promotion.

HD: So, Martin Lopez [drums] is still out and I’m sure a lot of fans are wondering how he’s doing and what it’s being like adapting to having to tour with a new drummer that’s not necessarily entirely familiar with your material?

MÅ: We’ve been doing some really good gigs with Axe [Martin Axeson of Witchery, Bloodbath] and he learned the material really fast, but obviously he’s trying to play somebody else’s stuff, so it’s never easy, I guess. But it’s worked fine with him, and Lopez is still, you know, still not with us and we’re not really sure what’s going to happen. I don’t think he’s decided what he wants to do yet, so…you know, it could be either/or.

T: So, I saw a promotional thing where you’re doing some shows where you’re playing a whole chronological order of songs from your beginning to your newest material. Are you going to be recording or filming any of those gigs, for a live album or anything?

MÅ: No, no, those are special events for this tour, you know, because we’re playing some cities that we haven’t covered on the previous tours. Those shows, obviously we’ve played a million times in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, so we wanted to do something special for those shows. Not to say that the other gigs suck, you know, it’s still a good gig, but it’s a fun thing to do once and a while, to do something special, and some of these songs we never really played live and some songs we haven’t played for years. It was interesting, we played last night, one of those shows, and we were kind of…bad. (Laughs)

T: I saw the set list for it, it was pretty impressive.

MÅ: Yeah, thanks, but I was just like, checking the forums, and they think the set list kinda sucks, you know, like “Why didn’t they play ‘Black Rose Immortal’?!” It’s alright, you know, people are never satisfied with things like that. But we didn’t deliver that well last night I don’t think, but the crowd seemed to like it, which I guess is the most important thing. But we went out to the pub drowning our sorrows. (Laughs)

HD: Well, with the arrival of Ghost Reveries you also now have Per [Wiberg] full-time on keyboards. Has that changed the dynamics at all, or the way you guys have been writing material, if you’ve been working on new stuff? Just basically, has he changed the way the band operates at all?

MÅ: Yeah, of course, you know, he was as involved with the new material as the other guys were. We rehearsed, and we haven’t really rehearsed for the last couple of hours [We think he meant “albums”] and this time we rehearsed for like three weeks or more and he was as involved as the other guys, like I said. And I wrote the stuff back at home, and I wrote some stuff on the keyboards as well, and some of the stuff…I can’t really play the keyboard, but you know, some of the stuff he kept and some of it he changed and wrote some new stuff, so, it was quite interesting working and have a new instrument in mind, because we’ve been doing the four-piece thing for a long, long time. So it was interesting trying to get something like new blood into the band, it’s always healthy when you’ve been around for such a long time as we have, and we don’t like the idea of us stagnating and doing the same thing. And this was a way for us to expand a little bit. Besides, he’d been touring with us for the previous records, we really liked him, he’s a very musical guy and he likes the band, and he was essential for this album, I think.

T: Okay, our show, The Creator Has A Mastertape, is based on playing prog-rock, krautrock, experimental stuff, pretentious crap, you know, and we know you’ve got a collection of a lot of older 70s prog-rock, and we were just curious what kind of stuff you would recommend for a show such as ours?

MÅ: I don’t know what you already know…

HD: Not including Camel (laughs)

[Mikael frequently refers to Camel as a huge influence on Opeth, and has even referred to a few Opeth songs as blatant Camel rip-offs]

MÅ: Well yeah, Camel is famous…(laughs)

HD: We already know you like Camel.

MÅ: But Camel is one of  the bands I got into pretty early on as I got into the whole progressive rock scene, you know, and I still value, as opposed to listening to something else really obscure, you know, I still value good players. That’s why I like Camel. But yeah, there’s so much…I buy so many records. I like melodic stuff and I like some insane stuff, like Ash Ra Temple, and Can…

T: Can is great.

MÅ: …and some Krautrock I like, and heavy rock, German heavy rock from the 70s, like Weed and Night Sun and Blackwater Park, there’s plenty, you know. So I basically collect English and German and Scandinavian, that’s basically what I do, and you know, as I get more involved with it I’m digging deeper, and finding more obscure stuff, and some of these bands are obviously crap, you know, but some of them are really good.

HD: We do a lot of digging ourselves, trying to make sure that the variety stays fresh. You know, we’ve got into some Scandinavian stuff and a lot of Canterbury scene stuff, so we appreciate your musical tastes.

MÅ: Yeah, you know, I was too young… I missed out on that whole scene, I grew up in the 70s, but when I got interested in music, it was only in metal. So, once I could afford to buy a few records on my own, I started digging in the second hand stores and picking up records.

HD: Do you primarily collect vinyl, or do you…

MÅ: Yeah, I don’t collect CDs…I buy CDs, I gotta bunch of CDs, but I don’t collect them, I don’t have an emotional attachment to CDs, I could throw them away any day, but the vinyl...it’d be like an arm missing if I were…

HD: The vinyl is the good stuff.

T: It’s hard to find, it’s hard to keep…

MÅ: Yeah, yeah, and you spend shitloads of money on it, you know….it’s my hobby.

T: Speaking of vinyl, what have you been spinning lately?

MÅ: I don’t have a vinyl player with me on the road…(laughs). No, I just…I buy so much stuff, I don’t know…I got a Climax Blues Band record that I really liked. And, what else…

HD: I think they’re on a record label from my home state, I’m from Maine...Northeast Indie, is that…? I don’t know, maybe I’m thinking of something else. [He was thinking of Climax Golden Twins. Oh well.]

MÅ: Yeah… that was a good record, and Rainbow Falling was an English band, psychedelic band, I really liked, I paid a shitload of money for it…what else did I get? I can’t remember,  I buy so much stuff I can’t remember (Laughs).

T: I’m going to ask a very personal question. What’s your favorite hair metal band?

MÅ: Whitesnake. They are not only a hair metal band, they started out being a blues rock band…

T: They started out being Deep Purple…

MÅ: Yeah...and so, you know….I like the cock rock. Whitesnake is, [David] Coverdale is probably my idol, he kind of remains fantastic after all these years; you know it’s like him and Dio probably deliver it today. Ozzy used to be my idol, but you know, it’s become a sideshow or some freak show, and I don’t really respect him musically anymore, but obviously I’ll always respect what he’s done in the past, but you know, Coverdale, I liked him with Purple, I liked him when they were just a blues band, Whitesnake…I like the fuckin’ big ass cock rock. (Laughs)

T: Steve Vai.

MÅ: Yeah, that album is not great, but…it’s, it has some really good songs on it.

HD: I can’t listen to Steve Vai without just picturing his face when he’s playing. He makes the funniest faces…I think out of anybody.

MÅ: Yeah, he sucks the cheeks in, that’s the cock rock face. (Laughs)

HD: (Laughing) The cock rock face…

MÅ: Yeah, yeah, you could probably…(Trails off)

T: Yeah, you’ve probably seen that several times. Let’s go back a little bit [on the list of questions]. I’ve been hearing some rumors of a project with Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree and Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater. What’s going on with that?

MÅ: As for now, it’s just talk. You know, me and Steven have been talking for years, ever since we started working together, doing something like writing music together. He had this song that he wrote for the In Absentia album called “Cut Ribbon” which never made it on the album, it was the best song I ever heard. But the other guys thought it was too heavy, it was like kind of  Opeth-sounding in a way, like Opeth and early Pink Floyd, you know…beautiful vocal harmonies, but they other guys thought it was too heavy so it didn’t make it on the album, so we said we’d record it. And Portnoy, I can’t remember, but…they tour with Dream Theater I think, Porcupine [Tree], and I guess they started talking, you know, we needed a drummer and Portnoy said “Yeah, I wanna play. Sure.”

T: He plays with everyone

MÅ: Yeah, yeah, he does, and it’s also…even though I’m not too fond of that whole “All-star” thing, this is going to be a musical project, not something that we expect necessarily to sell, but I guess it will. It’s not going to be like we’re going to present...when we do, it’s not going to be like “This new All-star band!”

T: Like Asia (Laughs)

MÅ: No, no, it’s not going to be like that, it’s going to be a musical project and it might be very inaccessible to some…I have no idea what it’s going to be like. But I’m pretty sure it’s going to happen.

T: I think you guys should cover “Heat of the Moment.”

MÅ: Say again?

T: You should cover “Heat of the Moment.”

MÅ: Yeah (laughs). I’m not sure what we’re going to do, I don’t even know what style it’s going to be.

HD: It’ll be interesting either way. I think your fans will be pleased.

T: …or they’ll be bitching on the Ultimate Metal message boards. (Laughs)

MÅ: Yeah, you know, it’s mostly bitching. (Laughs)

T: Yeah, it’s only a small percentage of people.

MÅ: Yeah, of course.

T: A very loud, annoying percentage.

MÅ: Yeah, yeah. It’s cool, you know, I don’t mind. We’ve been in this scene for such a long time, criticism from anyone doesn’t bother me longer than 5 minutes. Everyone has an asshole.

HD: Well, I think that pretty much wraps it up.

T: Hmm…I don’t know, I think that’s an important question right there [Pointing to question sheet].

HD: Is that an important question? When can we expect some synchronized head-banging, ala Meshuggah, from you guys? You know how they whip their heads around all together…

MÅ: The windmill? I can’t do that, I’d fall and trip… Mendez [Martin Mendez, bass] can do that, I can’t…But I do the old thrash head-bang…the Flotsam and Jetsam-type head-bang, that’s what I do.

HD: And you’ve got to point all your guitars out at the same time…

T: Put your foot up on the monitor like Steve Harris.

MÅ: It’s impossible to synchronize head banging because everyone’s got such a bad sense of rhythm. (Laughs)

HD: Alright. Well, we’d like to thank you for sitting down with us, we appreciate it a lot, and good luck with the show tonight.

MÅ: Thanks.

T: I’ll be throwing my fist up in the air for you.

MÅ: Good.

HD: And that’s the end. WNHU.

Set-list for the show that night:

Opeth

Ghosts of Perdition
White Cluster
The Amen Corner
Baying of the Hounds
Closure
Under the Weeping Moon
The Grand Conjuration
The Drapery Falls
______________
Deliverance

Dark Tranquility

The Wonders At Your Feet
Lost to Apathy
The Treason Wall
Damage Done
The New Build
The Endless Feed
Punish My Heaven
My Negation
Final Resistance

Devin Townsend Band

Truth
Regulator
Gaia
Pixillate
Vampolka
Vampira