Sweden's Opeth is a band that's always coming up with something new. They garnered much critical praise for 2003's Damnation, a mellow, almost progressive album that was the polar opposite of their previous album, Deliverance, which was recorded at the same time.
Opeth has just released the first DVD, Lamentations - Live At Shepherd's Bush Empire 2003. In addition to the live show, which is really two separate shows, including the entire Damnation album and a harder set, there is also a documentary. The 65 minute film covers the recording process for the two albums, which is a very interesting behind the scenes look.
Opeth is currently on tour, and I recently spoke with guitarist Peter Lindgren.
Chad Bowar: How is the tour going so far?
Peter Lindgren: We had a few problems at the beginning, but now we sorted it out and it's going smoothly. Moonspell and DevilDriver are on the bill. We are headlining and they swap opening for us. There have been a few sold out shows, which is great. The Fillmore was the highlight. It's a classic venue in San Francisco and it was sold out. Most of the shows have been really good.
What is the setlist like?
We've rehearsed songs from all albums, but we miscalculated the time. We play for an hour and 45, but the set we rehearsed happened to be 2 hours and 15, which was too long. So we had to take out songs, so now we cover all albums except for the first two.
Are you starting to feel at home when you're in America?
Yes, this is our second home. We're here more than we're in Sweden.
Where haven't you toured that you'd like to go?
We were very close to going to South America, but the Chilean promoter fucked everything up for us with the flights and everything. So we were in Mexico on our way to Chile but we had to cancel because it wasn't even physically possible to fly out with all the equipment. Japan is the other place that we've never been. Swedish bands are huge in Japan, and they should like us because we've got a lot of guitar stuff going on.
How did you get a gig in Amman, Jordan?
There's a metal audience in Jordan, but we're not allowed to do the death metal screams. We can have distorted guitars and mellow stuff. There's been a few bands that have gone there and played, but no metal bands. It's going to be a very different show I think. We cancelled that show in December, so we're going to do it now. The last guy to play there was Sting.
What is on the new DVD?
It's a set that we did in England last year. It was a mellow set of an hour, then we rebuilt the stage and did a heavy set. It's both sides of us. Last year we did tours for both Damnation and Deliverance. It's like a mix of those two shows. Then there's a documentary with interviews and the studio recording of the albums. There's three hours of material, and the live footage is really good.
I know you guys weren't that excited about doing a DVD.
DVDs aren't such a big thing in Europe. You don't buy music DVDs there. But it's huge over here. When we were asked to do the DVD, we were like, "What's the point?" We didn't know it was such a huge thing in the U.S. We realized it would be a good idea to record a DVD.
Damnation was a huge departure musically for Opeth. How did your fans respond to it?
They reacted well. Everybody seemed to like it. I was a bit surprised because I was expecting a range of reviews from really bad to excellent. All of the journalists liked it and our fans love it. They sing along to all the songs. I thought it would be trickier to promote the album, because even though we have a lot of ballads on the past albums, we're still a metal band and our fans are metal fans. They've learned that we can do strange things on our albums, and I think they appreciate everything that we do and this was the ultimate test. People seemed to like it a lot.
It's amazing it turned out so well seeing the problems you had in the studio.
It was hell. There was a time we thought we'd never make it. We worked so hard in the studio for so many weeks. It almost killed all the enthusiasm for the music itself, but we barely made it. Now looking back I don't regret at all that we did it, but we're never going to do it again.
You had to switch studios in the middle of recording the albums, right?
Yeah, because the first studio was shit. We loved the atmosphere. It was an old Prague studio from the 70s and it had this feeling, but the equipment wasn't up to date at all. It didn't even have computers. We had to change to make it happen.
You didn't have a lot of material prepared before you went into the studio.
That is basically because we always have a lack of time. The ideal situation is to have all the material written and rehearsed, but there's always a lack of time. This time when we record we're going to be fully prepared. If Mike (vocalist/guitarist Mikael Akerfeldt) writes the material in the evening that we're going to record it, there's no way to personalize it with the rest of the band members. You also have only one chance to record something. If it's pretty good then we take it, where as if you rehearse the songs maybe you can have better ideas, can rethink things.
What is your timetable for recording the next album?
We don't have one yet. Australia is the last tour that we're doing, then we need a break. We've been on tour for 15 months, and with the recording and mixing we've basically been gone from home for two years. So we're going to have a break and then start writing and rehearsing. I don't know when we're going to record, but it's going to take some time, at least half a year.
Will Steven Wilson be involved in producing the next album?
Definitely, if he's available. We're going to offer him the job and we're going to try to match our schedule to his. We just hope he's available. He's a very busy guy with his band and producing.
From the way you guys have done things in the past, I'm guessing the next album will sound a lot different from the last two.
All the albums that we put out will have all the Opeth ingredients, everything that you think is Opeth is going to be there. We're never going to do the same album twice, so it's going to be a different album. All I can say it's going to be a single album, and it's going to have an Opeth feeling to it.
How did you get started in music?
I was 14 or 15 when I started playing the guitar, so I started pretty late. I instantly formed a band. Before I joined Opeth I had a couple of thrash bands. I was into Metallica when I started playing the guitar.
What are you currently listening to on the tour bus?
There's always a few party CDs. I brought the whole Van Halen remastered collection, the first six albums. Me and the keyboard player sat up a few nights, drinking whiskey and listening to old Van Halen. We try to buy as many albums as we can when we're on tour so we can have something new.
No comments:
Post a Comment