Three years is just about the longest period between Opeth studio releases in recent memory. Perhaps ever. After releasing Ghost Reveries in the summer of 2005, the band had been on a nearly constant touring schedule right up to this time last year, when they finally took a break to write and recuperate for their next record.
The extensive touring, their longest to date due to support from their new label Roadrunner Records, wore on the 20-plus-year-old band, however. Shortly after going on tour for Ghost Reveries, drummer Martin Lopez had to sit on the sidelines due to illness and was eventually replaced by Bloodbath drummer Martin Axenrot. And after the completion of their tour cycle, longtime guitarist Peter Lindgren said goodbye as well, and his position was quickly filled by Fredrik Akesson, formerly of Arch Enemy.
Most bands would probably play it safe during such periods of transition, but the internal turbulence instead helped spur a change in the end result, Watershed. Any expectations of evolution from the last album are met, and likely bested, by not only the reinvigorated lineup, but also the longer time spent by frontman Mikael Akerfeldt writing and rewriting the material.
All these elements coalesce in a body of new music stands well out in front (and maybe a bit off to the left) from the band’s previous material in songwriting and direction, and it could be argued as their most detailed offering yet. The Aquarian Weekly sat down with Akerfeldt and Akesson to discuss this leap for Opeth.
This is really your first lineup change in about 10 years, with the exception of adding Per on keyboards.
Mikael: We’ve had complete lineup changes before, so it seems the same as back in ‘97 when Anders [Nordin], the first drummer, left and Johan [DeFarfalla], the bass player, was fired. It was just me and Peter all of a sudden. This kind of reminds me of that. I don’t know how many albums we still have in us, but it feels right now that I’m eager to do another one, you know (laughs). We’ve been a band with Peter and Lopez and everything, and Mendez. You kind of get used to each other. With Lopez and Peter, they lost their edge, so to speak. Their love for what we’re doing. I guess we got a little bit jaded in a way. Now with Axe and Fredrik in the band, it’s cliché, but it feels new and fresh. Those guys, they couldn’t stop playing in the studio. We haven’t had this kind of atmosphere in the band in ten years. That made me feel really good and made me feel pumped up about doing this album and also about our future.
With Peter and Martin [Lopez] taking off, was it a tour-related stress? You toured more around Ghost Reveries than any other record.
Mikael: Yes, we did. It certainly had a lot to do with the touring that we do, because it’s not easy for anyone to be away from home that much and working all the time. The idea about metal music for me is I love it, I love playing. When you’re doing gig number 200, sometimes you feel like, ‘I don’t want to this.’ I guess it got them a little bit. Also, Lopez, he was ill. He definitely needed time off of everything. Peter had additional interests as well because of his education. I don’t. My education isn’t worth anything. I don’t have anything else than the music. He [Fredrik] bailed from school or whatever.
Fredrik: I didn’t bail, but when you’re 15 years old you usually go to high school. I never did that. I went to work in a factory to buy amps (laughs). All I’ve got is my pick and guitar.
Mikael: Same with Axe. He was about to leave his love for music because his bands weren’t going anywhere. He was going to get a job in a sausage factory or something (laughs). Per’s been a professional musicians for years and years. Mendez is the same as me. He moved from Uruguay to Stockholm to be in a death metal band. Says a lot. So we don’t have anything else. There’re no other interests pulling us other than what we’re doing. And Peter is working now, based on his education. History, science, physics, I think, and literature. He’s well-educated. And to some extent I can feel that he was wasting his time with us in a way, even though I loved the time we had with Peter and we’re still good friends and we did some really good albums together. We always had a good time. Parts of me felt that, you have all these kinds of things going on, what are you going to do with that? You’ve just wasted those years in school. Because I remember when I was writing the My Arms, Your Hearse record, he was going to school, studying and all that stuff. He never made the same commitment to music as I did, I guess. Because I just left everything and ventured into poverty, basically. And he, because when you study, you get money from the government.
Not here.
Mikael: Yeah, well in Sweden. He always had this additional interest that stemmed from his years in school and as we were going off tour for Ghost Reveries he got a job. Like, a extra thing, consultant, IT, programming, whatever it is. Mendez was going to play tango music. Per was doing his solo projects. Axe is going in to do Bloodbath, doing Witchery. Myself, obviously writing. Peter started working, and it seemed like, ‘You’ve got a job.’ Obviously he was dipping his toes in the water of something else. Eventually, I think the spark wasn’t there anymore. In retrospect, even though it’s devastating and I’m always going to be sad about that, it’s for the better.
So how did you two get together?
Fredrik: Well, we had known each other for about three years, maybe four years actually. We hung out a lot on the Gigantour when I was still playing with Arch Enemy when Opeth was on the same bill. I was hanging out with the guys a lot.
Mikael: He was more on our bus than he was his own.
Fredrik: (laughs) It was more good company, good friends. It started with Mikael wanted me to jam a bit with him.
Mikael: I wanted a few guitar lessons. Right hand technique.
Fredrik: Mikael wanted to work on his technique, playing fast.
Mikael: Well, he is a guitar teacher. You know. He gives guitar lessons to kids.
Fredrik: Yeah, a few kids, local kids. Anyway, yeah it started with that, jamming a bit. Then in February, Chris [Amott] got back to Arch Enemy, and I didn’t really know what to do, but in the end of April, beginning of May I think it was, Mikael called me and asked me to join. I was very happy to get that call, because I had been a fan of Opeth for quite some time, since the Blackwater Park record, when I started listening to Opeth. For me it was a huge honor and relief also. New job.
Mikael: He said something to me that made me really happy. He said he really enjoyed playing with Arch Enemy but Opeth was a band he would go out and buy a record for.
Fredrik: Yeah, I did go out and buy Opeth records.
Mikael: It made me really happy. We didn’t audition anyone else. I just had my mind on him when everything with Peter went down. We could have easily found hundreds of guitar players to audition. We hit it off on a personal level, which is obviously important. And I like his style. I was thinking about calling Jeff Loomis up, but whatever. We have it here.
Fredrik: If I compare it with the time I was in Arch Enemy it was different. I feel more a part of this band. In Arch Enemy, I was basically playing Chris Amott’s part. This time around I get to do the record before I do the touring. It’s a huge difference.
You’re not filling in, essentially.
Fredrik: Exactly. Looking at the Arch Enemy period, it’s almost like playing covers. I had a great time.
You had more time leading into Ghost Reveries to write. Did you have that same luxury this time around?
Mikael: Yeah, yeah. Everything was finished. One song that’s not going to be on the album that wasn’t completely finished. But the album was written this time. The same with the last record except for the song named “Atonement.” That wasn’t finished, kind of made up the studio. But it’s a little jingle song. It didn’t demand as much attention, it was just pieced together. Yeah, everything was written. We made the mistake when we did the double album—I went into the studio with ‘We’re going to record two albums,’ and I had no songs written and we hadn’t rehearsed once. It was just bits and pieces. I was going in, I guess I was hot-headed or whatever, because we had done a few albums like that with no rehearsals and that kind of stuff. But that was a nightmare. We recorded what we had during the day and I was writing in the night. I got sick after that recording. It wasn’t fun. That was the last time I did it like that. It was good, some of those albums have some great songs that were spontaneously written in the studio, just recorded, once we put out the record nobody [in the band] knew what was on there. It could have been a collection of farts basically. We didn’t know anything, but it was exciting to do it like that. Soon enough, though, you start doing mistakes. A couple of songs on the Deliverance record, I listen to it and I can hear the, ‘Ahhhh, let’s do it like this.’ Grasping at straws just to complete the fucking song.
A lot of those songs have riffs that just continue.
Mikael: Exactly. (laughs) It kind of worked in a way for that album, because it gives you some kind of feeling, but I didn’t want to do it like that. I didn’t want to sit and listen to the record and wait for the next riff. So when we did Ghost Reveries we made sure that there is not a part that doesn’t serve a purpose. And certainly for the last one. If it feels like it’s too long we just cut it down. I feel overall the songs are just written better on the last two albums. The new one certainly, we spent a lot of time writing the songs, listening to the songs, because I could record the entire songs, demos and stuff, so I could listen to them, change them, rearrange them. And I think it came out better. It’s not spontaneous, but better (laughs).
The arrangements on the new album are far more complicated.
Mikael: It’s certainly a very complicated record, to the point where it’s exhausted to play. To play it, it’s exhausting. The first couple of rehearsals we did for it, I just came home, headache, tired, just went to bed. I was asking the other guys in the rehearsal room, ‘Do you get tired after rehearsals?’ They’re like, ‘Yeah, I pass out on the couch.’ It’s definitely, the arrangements are very complicated but it doesn’t really sound that complicated.
It sounds kind of complicated to me. At least referentially there are parts that don’t normally appear in your work.
Mikael: Yeah, I guess. There’s some new. I guess this album, that’s why I said I’m kind of eager to do a new album, because this album, something happened with the band. it might be because we have a new band, but the music is happening now, it’s moving a little bit. Usually you do a few albums that are kind of similar. You want to evolve and move and you’re doing your best, but the only way to do it and make it sound good is if it happens naturally, you know. I think this album is taking us somewhere, and that’s why I’m kind of eager to do another album now.
Did you feel you had more fluency in the studio, with one album behind you already in the producer chair?
Mikael: Maybe. Maybe just with the songwriting I could spend more time on it and I could do better demos, because I bought a new little studio thing, ProTools, I could work more with the songs and change thing. I guess I felt to some extent when I was writing the songs—the funk part, it sounds like a psychedelic funk band, that we have in “The Lotus Eaters”—normally a couple of years ago I would be like, ‘It’s cool, but we can’t have it.’ Now it’s like anything goes. I always had that mindset, but I guess secretly, if it was too outrageous, maybe not. This part I think wouldn’t have ended up on the album a couple of years back. It just felt… ‘Fuck it. Let’s do it.’
I can hear it too, because it sounds like a part you wanted to put in there for years.
Mikael: Yeah, and the same with the detuning guitar. A lot of people are thinking we’re destroying the songs. That we’re destroying the beautiful memory of the songs. But that was the idea.
Fredrik: That was a spontaneous idea. That wasn’t planned.
Mikael: Yeah.
Fredrik: You asked me to go into the studio room and actually detune it in real time.
Mikael: The song is a sappy sentimental ballad, I wanted to sound like a mid-‘70s, Uriah Heep song. I love the song, but I just wanted to make sure that people know that we know it is a sappy sensitive fucking pretentious ballad by detuning the guitar. (laughs)
Listening to it, I said, ‘Wow, Opeth wrote a power ballad.’
Mikael: I’m a big fan of power ballads. That’s what I like. I also like the fact that the first song is obviously quite mellow, then it’s a good 20 or 25 minutes of intense metal, complicated stuff, with the funk thing, quiet talking in the end of “Lotus Eaters.” The “Burden” song is a kind of breather. Just lean back and enjoy. It’s a very vocal, melodic song.
Which is why it was surprising to me that “Porcelain Heart” would be the single. I thought they might want to push you towards “Burden” to do a clean song.
Mikael: I think that’s going to happen. That’s one of the things that our A&R guy, Mike Gitter, he wanted to hear that song an additional extra time, the “Burden” song. All of us thought that he is going to say something like, ‘I’m not sure if this is good for the album.’ I was getting ready to fight or whatever. But then he said, ‘Yeah, maybe this is a single song, that we can push to classic rock radio or whatever.’ Which made me really happy. We’ve always had those elements. On every album I think that there’s a song that you could play to your grandmother. I think it’s about time that we try it. If they want to push it towards a classic rock thing—that’s what we all listen to anyway. I wanted “Isolation Years” to be a single but they said no. At the end of the day I don’t really care. I like all the songs, they can pick whatever they want.
Trying to sort of grasp the concept of the album, I’m thinking there’s something to do with time, familial relations, but outside of that I’m sort of reaching.
Mikael: I’ve decided that I’m not going to talk about the lyrics for this album, or the titles, why I chose the titles. I’ve done a number of concept records which are just kind of fictional or whatever, easy to talk about I guess, a few personal albums like Deliverance and Morningrise actually is very personal. Then I kind of dabbled with the occult on the last record, which is a bunch of bollocks that doesn’t really mean anything. Now on this album I wrote lyrics that I feel I can’t really talk about them. I don’t want people to know the lyrics. I’m going to try to convince everyone at Roadrunner that I don’t want the lyrics to come out. We might have them coded, just to piss people off. I don’t know what we’re going to do but I certainly don’t want to talk about them. It’s the first time I actually did lyrics that are personal to the level that I feel I can’t talk about it. But people are going to make out what I’m singing. Then, even if they would have the lyrics, at least they can’t quote me on the lines, saying ‘What does it mean?’ Even if they pick out the lyrics I can say ‘No, that’s not what I’m singing.’ Lie. (laughs)
There’s some interconnecting glue to the songs in terms of recurring musical elements.
Mikael: I guess what I wanted with the album was I wanted to make a dark sounding record, and it’s a lot of Arabic scales going on with a lots of major chords, and I think that might be what you’re referring to, similar scales. I wanted all the songs to stand alone, but also, obviously, there’s the way you sequence a record. A bonus song that’s not ending up on the record, it didn’t end up flowing with the other songs as well, so it just feels like these songs belong together, I guess, to me. I obviously wanted them to sound different from one another.
Tonally, it sounds like you’re slightly more aggressive. Dirtier.
Mikael: Definitely dirtier than the last album, which is a slick, like a Journey death metal record (laughs). Very slick sounding record. The new one is a bit dirtier. It has a lot to do with the guitar sound I think.
Fredrik: The main heavy guitars on this album, we weren’t sure in the beginning when recording, usually some bands one player plays both rhythms.
Mikael: Make it sound really tight.
Fredrik: But this time around we did two channels, each side, two different amps, so I was on the left side and he (Mikael) was on the right side I think. We played really tight together.
Mikael: Yeah, and when we went through all the songs, when I taught him how to play the riffs, because, you know I just play it, and he’s looking at how I hit the strings, as if there’s a ghost note, we’re doing the exact same thing. I can hear some mistakes or whatever you call them, that were not 100 percent.
Fredrik: There’s a bit of difference that makes it a bit dirtier.
Mikael: We also used a delay pedal, an analog delay pedal, Maxon. It’s really dirty, almost on the border into ugly delay sound, while in the past we always had clean nice crisp delay.
Fredrik: It is for more open, octave riffs.
Mikael: It’s more like a tape deck. I wanted this album to sound slightly dirtier than the last one and more, the last one was so slick and this one feels just more alive I guess.
How did he (Mikael) convince you to start playing PRS through Laney heads?
Fredrik: Well, I tried his guitars and I’ve always been a fan of the Les Paul shape and I use a singlecut PRS now. I really like ESP when I was playing with Arch Enemy, but I really like these guitars. Mikael got me into them, that’s very true. He was kind of like, ‘Don’t you really want to play PRS guitars?’
Mikael: It’s toy guitars and real guitars (laughs).
Fredrik: (laughs) I wouldn’t say that. But yeah I really like them. But I don’t play Laneys. I played Laneys for a while in the beginning when I joined Opeth. As of last week, I’m going to start playing Marshall amps.
Mikael: We had Marshall in the studio. We used Laney and Marshall and Mesa Boogie. Marshall sounded great, I think.
Fredrik: New model called GVM. Four channel amp, which is a bit different from other Marshalls. Four different channels and each channel has three different modes, so you can get a lot of different sounds from good clean sounds to old man’s rock, real metal stuff. It’s not modeling or faked or anything. A lot of different characters.
Mikael: Endorsements make it really easy. Laney has always been very supportive of Opeth, they’ve always had our gear shipped out or whatever and given us whatever we want basically. Same with PRS, it’s ridiculous, because it’s not guitars that you just found in a flea market. They’re pretty expensive, well-made instruments. They give us what we want.
Fredrik: I’m impressed by the way they tune all over the neck.
Mikael: You can hear, you just do any chord and you can hear every string in the chord. I haven’t found a guitar that I can do that. the first time I played a PRS I played an E minor or whatever and I said, ‘Wow I can actually hear every string in this chord.’ Even on really good guitars like Gibson or whatever it’s kind of like, it sounds good, but it’s kind of… it’s different. So I really like PRS, they’re really supportive of us. Same with Laney, for me I’m going to stick with Laney.
Fredrik: I felt that I needed to step out of copying Peter’s rig exactly (laughs).
Mikael: We never persued. I can’t even remember how we ended up with PRS guitars. All of a sudden we were endorsed, but I never wrote them. Said, ‘Hey guys, give me a guitar.’ All of a sudden we were endorsed. I think we ended up buying a guitar and soon enough we got some kind of deal going. Laney was just like, ‘Want some amps?’
Moving on to the four remaining tracks, the three covers and the one song that you wrote with Per. You left off the Per track because you didn’t feel that it flowed together?
Mikael: I love that song. I think it’s one of the most original sounding songs that we’ve recorded actually. But it doesn’t fit together with the other songs. As far as sequencing I think is perfect now. Anything extra or less would kind of ruin. But that song was left off because of that fact. It didn’t feel like it belonged.
Are you planning on releasing them, one album, then a special edition out at the same time?
Mikael: Yeah I think it’s going to be at the same time.
So I don’t have to buy it three times?
Mikael: (laughs) We get a lot of shit for that. Record labels are struggling, you know, they have to make money somehow. For me I don’t really care, you know. I don’t see it as a rip-off, because people don’t have to buy it and most people don’t buy it anyway. I didn’t say anything about a special edition or if it’s going to be released at the same time or anything, but they said they’re going to put it out at the same time.
Why did you choose Alice In Chains, Robin Trower…
Mikael: Always loved Robin Trower. Same with Alice In Chains. Dirt is the first CD I bought. I bought Dirt, Blind Melon, the debut record, and some other album I can’t remember. But always loved that album, I think it’s a masterpiece that album, all the songs are fantastic. We just started talking about doing covers. Talked about King Crimson.
Fredrik: I wanted to do Ozzy.
Mikael: “Diary Of A Madman,” we were going to do that one. We just decided on doing these three songs. Basically we chose the songs because they’re great songs, not that we want to try and get some fucking extra fame. We love Robin Trower, love Alice In Chains, and when the news got out that we were doing Alice In Chains songs everybody’s like, ‘Oh dude, I want to hear that.’
My girlfriend is terrified.
Mikael: It’s not bad.
Fredrik: It’s hard to pull off that song, but you did a great job with the vocals.
Mikael: It’s pretty close to the original I think, I can’t say it’s as good. But it’s a good cover I think. You think the lead guitar is too loud but I like it, it makes it a little bit different, because otherwise it sounds exactly the same (laughs). We did some harmony vocals on the verses, but they were with myself. I think it sounds good.
Fredrik: We did something different with the last chorus, it kind of disappeared accidentally (laughs). Because I accidentally played a longer guitar solo and they ended up skipping the chorus and we left it. So there probably will be some upset people about that.
Mikael: It’s not 100 percent serious anyway. My favorite is the Robin Trower song. That really came out fucking awesome. That’s the last song I did and my voice was really raspy at the time, so I sounded like Peter Criss singing “Black Diamond.” It’s a different way of singing than I ever did before. Same thing with Alice In Chains song, it’s very raspy vocals. Then we did the Roxette’s singer, Mary Fredriksson song. She did a couple of solo albums and one of them is a very dark and moody record that I’ve always loved, so we did a song from that which is just an acoustic with vocals. It reminds me of Stockholm.
Well it’s not the first time you guys have done covers, you did the Celtic Frost cover.
Fredrik: “Soldier Of Fortune.”
Mikael: The Iron Maiden song we did sucks.
Fredrik: I haven’t heard that.
Mikael: Good for you.
Fredrik: Which song?
Mikael: “Remember Tomorrow.” That was the first recording we did with Lopez. I don’t think he ever played a 4/4 at the time, so we did “Remember Tomorrow” and he was struggling. It originally came out on a tribute record. They were so popular in the mid-‘90s. But, it’s bad. It’s probably the worst recording we’ve ever done, the Iron Maiden cover. The Celtic Frost one is okay actually.
I like the Celtic Frost one. Your vocals on “Remember Tomorrow…”
Mikael: I’m ashamed of that.
Fredrik: Trying to sound like Bruce?
Mikael: That’s Paul DiAnno singing.
Fredrik: Oh yeah! Of course it is.
Mikael: But no, I couldn’t sing that, you know. It’s just bad, just bad. Horrible.
Are you trying for any other special content or et cetera, I guess you’re going to have to do two CDs if you’re doing a special edition?
Mikael: We did a film, we were supposed to film in the studio, but the guy who had done our past documentaries, he didn’t get time off work, so we filmed a little bit on our own and it was just Axe cooking dinner, fart, you know. There was nothing we could use really. So we did a couple of days worth of filming in the rehearsal room, playing songs from the new album and then interviews with every member, because in the past, it’s basically just been interviews with me and Peter. Now we had more of everyone in the band is talking.
Fredrik: You also did a studio thing, showing how you come up with songs. We played a few solos and some parts on the new record.
Mikael: I remember when we filmed this, we were like, ugh, because both me and Fred played pretty shitty, but it came out better than I thought.
It doesn’t play like Opeth advanced master class or anything?
Mikael: (laughs) No. We filmed this 50 minute long film and four songs and yeah, that’s about it.
Did the drummer change from Lopez to Axe enter your mind? I mean, there’s blast beats on this record.
Mikael: No, but he did it so well, the blast beats. I was never really a big fan and we didn’t use him as if we want to compete with the fast bands. In a way it’s like a little gimmick, but in a way it worked, because we had this riff that sounded kind of like a Strapping Young Lad riff, tried a few drumbeats, and then we tried blast beats and some clean vocals, and hey, it’s something special. Axe is just a solid heavy rock drummer I guess. He’s trained like a marching band. I wanted to show all spectrums of his drumming, because he got a lot of shit when he joined the band. When Lopez joined the band, it was like, ‘Oh, he doesn’t play like Anders. Too much of a metal drummer.’ Now it’s the same kind of discussion. ‘He’s not as good as Lopez. He doesn’t have the groove.’ It’s just bullshit. Axe can groove as well or better than Lopez. Lopez himself, I talked to him on the phone, he’s like, ‘He’s got a groove.’ I just wanted to show all spectrums. It’s the same as with Lopez. There’s never any limitations to any instrument I feel. To me I always try to write songs and sing and play guitar above my ability so I can develop. I just wanted to make sure that when I play the demo to the guys in the band, they’re going to listen to it and they’re going to feel, ‘Wow.’ Itching to play this stuff. It’s not a one-sided kind of things. You have to use all your abilities as a musician to play these songs. And Axe was no exception. To some extent I wanted to show off with him, with the first song, he has his own little drum break and everything from the sensitive kind of jazzy type of playing to hard hitting metal. So that’s basically the same as with Lopez. Lopez always had great ideas with drumming, with drumbeats, and mean and him worked perfectly together. But his first record with us was much more of a bad experience than Axe’s first record. I feel like he’s done. He is the Opeth drummer, he knows everything. With Lopez it took him a few records. The first record is kind of shaky, My Arms, Your Hearse. Second album with him, Still Life, he got into his element, and certainly on Blackwater Park. I think Axe is already done. He started on a much higher level than Lopez did. Because Lopez had the fast parts nailed down when he joined the band but he didn’t really play 4/4s, didn’t really play soft in those days at all. Those influences like when people saying, ‘Oh his Latin influence,’ or ‘his jazz influence.’ That came way later. Once he had been in Opeth for a while he could see that he could actually incorporate this influence into this music. When he joined the band he didn’t know. He came from Amon Amarth. They didn’t say, ‘Okay, we want this drumbeat to be a bit jazzy or a bit Latin influenced.’
Do you foresee yourself in the future sort of getting further into a prog-influenced sound, feeling that you have a lot more room to breathe?
Mikael: I don’t know. I don’t really know what our prog-influence, what it is anymore. It’s so different. The mindset writing this album was a little different than before. Our prog influence before was a lot of jazz and King Crimson. Now I listen to a lot of Scott Walker and Funkadelic and Joni Mitchell. All sorts of things that I always really liked. Lots of psychedelic music. Hence the backwards things and phrasing, or Per’s keyboard solo in “Burden.” I think the song that represents what I like now with Opeth is “Lotus Eaters.” It has everything. It’s just insane. That’s what I like, music that once you think you’re beginning to grasp the idea of the song, it just goes completely the other direction, like, ‘Oh, what the fuck happened there.’ That’s what I like. One of the things that people tell me sometimes, like I did interviews in Stockholm for people who had a listening session for this album, and they’re like, ‘Oh it’s so different. I love Ghost Reveries, but in a way I knew what to expect.’ Like they could read us. But for this album I don’t think it’s easy to understand where we’re going next in the songs. I can understand that Ghost Reveries is more fluid in that sense and that’s one of those things that I don’t want to hear, even though it’s true.
There is something about your writing style previously that you’re leading the listener by the nose a bit.
Mikael: If you’re been into the band for a while you might understand. That is still our style, but I think this album is developing that.
In general, the new record is sort of all over the place. Not in a bad way, though.
Mikael: (laughs) I can definitely see. I have heard the album so many times.
It’s not as instantly gratifying as the other records. There’s a sinking in period required.
Mikael: Definitely, definitely much more than any of the other records. I wanted it to be a hard record to understand. But I wanted it to be the first time you listen to it, I want you to feel like, ‘I want to hear it again.’ Maybe you don’t like it at all, but you want to hear it again. Some songs are much easier to understand at first listen, like the ballad type songs. But the first two heavy songs, and “Hessian Peel,” you’re not going to get those songs at first listen. I think that’s a good thing. That’s the type of records I like, where you discover new things all the time.
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