"When it comes to culture, I think the biggest export from Sweden is probably metal music."

In the very beginning of June 2008, Sweden's avantgardists Opeth released a magnificent new full-length studio album, “Watershed”, which was the reason for Tangra Mega Rock to conduct a conversation with the band's leader and ideologist, Mr. Mikael Åkerfeldt...

Vassil Varbanov: Hey Mike, how are you?

Mikael Åkerfeldt: I’m OK. I just got up actually and my neck is hurting because I strained it yesterday at the show, but I’m OK.

V. V.: You are in The States, I believe…

M. Г….: Yeah. We are in Miami right now.

V. V.: Is it hot like hell?

M. Г….: No, it is raining like hell.

V. V.: The idea to have you with us today is this brand new Opeth album. How do you feel? I mean, afterВ "Watershed" was ready, did you feel kind of relieved that the baby was born?

M. Å.: Yeah. It has put a lot of pressure on you to record an album and not every time it’s a pleasurable experience to record an album, but this one was quite easy to do, even though it was a crucial album. You know, every album is crucial, but now we have two guys leaving the band. Nine records, you know? I don’t know that many bands that do their best material 18 years after they started. I think we have a lot of people thinking we are not able to pull anything interesting off, but I think we did.

V. V.: But do you really feel that this is the best album you have ever done?

M. Å.: Yeah, right now I do. And for me it’s always been a bit like that, I mean, with a few exceptions, the new album has always been my favourite album… With the exception of “Deliverance”. I was like, wow, what happened here, you know? But then “Damnation” became my favourite album and after that obviously “Ghost Reveries” became my favourite album. Now it’s this one.

V. V.: Using the metaphor of baby born in Europe, usually in England they say: Come home or in the pub to wash the baby’s head. Do you guys, the musicians - and this is the first time I ever think of a question like that - do some kind of party on the release day? Just you and your closest friends and get pissed like hell?

M. Å.: He-he-he… Well, we don’t do this for the record release, but we do it once you have a kid, you have a party with your friends, but I have never done that… Once you have a kid, you are not allowed to party for a while.

V. V.: The other interesting thing is that basically there’s a kind of a bonus part of the CD with 2 or 3 cover versions, I believe. So it was an Alice in Chains track and then it was this Swedish Roxette girl, I believe…

M. Å.: Yes, that’s right.

V. V.: You chose this song for patriotism reasons or why?

M. Å.: No, no, not at all, I just love the song. It’s a bit of fun gimmick to do Swedish songs of course, but I love this song for a good 15 years when I first heard it and I always wanted to record it, but it takes a lot of confidence, I think, for me to especially sing a song like that which was sung by a woman and second, to sing a song in Swedish, because it’s a bit awkward, if you know what I mean. I’ve never really done that before. But I love the song. It’s a simple type sing-a-songwriter’s song - just acoustic guitar and vocals. I think it has a classic quality, almost like “Working Class Hero”.

V. V.: You said that this is the best album you have ever done as a band. What was the challenge in terms of production for you, because you produced the CD together with Jens Bogren?

M. Å.: Yeah. There’s a lot of production features. I listen to a lot of 60’s music, which I always have to some extent, you know, with The Beatles and whatever you listen to the bigger bands in the end of the 60’s, but I started digging deeper and found bands like The Zombies and… There was a lot of obscure bands that came out in the late 60’s and they used a lot of interesting production features, you know, like backwards voices, phasing and all sorts and kinds of sound effects, which I wanted to incorporate in these songs.

V. V.: But most of these effects in the 60’s were analogue.

M. Å.: Yeah, that’s right. We have some of those analogue effects, but you can do a fairly good sounding stuff digitally now. The whole recording process is digital, so it sounds like digital… You know, we’ve done many records on tape and everything, but now it’s so much easier to do everything on computer.

V. V.: This is actually the first album where you have Fredrik and the other guy together, so tell us more about them, please.

M. Å.: Fredrik Åkesson has been a semi-professional musician for the bigger part of his life. He didn’t go to high-school, he kind of jumped straight into the whole kind of music industry. He travelled to L.A. and tried to make it big there like Yngwie Malmsteen, you know, and he’s been in several bands and he’s done a lot of session work, playing with all sorts of artists, like pop artists, you know, whatever. There were Talisman, which is a quite famous Swedish melodic rock band…

V. V.: Yeah, we know Talisman very well.

M. Å.: Yeah, so he was with them for five or six albums or something like that, but he never liked their whole kind of music. He wanted to play a more metal type of music. Eventually he had a side-project that he started with a couple of guys from Europe called SouthPaw which he put an album with, and eventually he ventured into Tiamat and after that Arch Enemy and now with us. And he is working on a solo album as well, which I heard and it is very heavy, but, you know, I saw him playing covers in a bar in Stockholm. Like playing Judas Priest, King Diamond and that kind of covers. I knew who he was of course, but I was like, wow! He had a black Les Paul plugged straight into the Marshall and it just killed it! He had perfect timing, so I just picked up the phone and said, “Do you want to go?”, and he was like, “Yes! Yes, I do.”

V. V.: Easy…

M. Å.: Yeah, and Axe (Martin Axenrot) was more of a stress, he was kind of stressed from the situation because we were in the middle of touring and Martin Lopez got really ill and couldn’t play with us anymore and went back home. We found a substitute for the tour and it was Gene Hoglan who played with us for like 2 weeks or something. But we had so much touring lined up and we were like, what the fuck are we going to do now? We need to find a substitute for some time until Lopez comes back. I had been recommended by a friend of ours that Axe was a great drummer and he would sew with us and whatever and I met him… And he said that, you know, he was influenced… I thought he was just that kind of metal drummer, but it was pretty much far away from the truth. He was like on the contrary in a way. He listens to metal and got all that nailed down, but he was into Billy Cobham and fuckin' Buddy Rich and those kind of guys. He came to Stockholm and played. We did a rehearsal with him and he just played all the songs without stopping and I was like, yeah! That was pretty impressive and we decided on him being the substitute drummer until Lopez comes back, but obviously Lopez left and it was never a question in our minds, but at that time, to be honest, we felt more comfortable playing with Axe than we did with Lopez for the last couple of years. By the time Lopez said, “I’m not coming back”, we were already so happy playing with Axe that even though I was devastated to some extent that Lopez was not coming back, I was so happy with the new band situation. I wasn’t really, really sad about the whole musical development to go.

V. V.: Lucky you! Next question and then two more to go... It’s basically the same thing with swapping drummers and changing drummers… The whole world and especially Europe was quite surprised to see a good label like Music for Nations die, almost overnight. You have so many albums released through this label. Is it the same situation? Were you depressed seeing your old label die, and now you are happy with the new one?

M. Å.: Yeah, pretty much. Die is not the word I would make reference to Lopez, you know, he’s very much alive, huh…

V. V.: Yeah, sorry.

M. Å.: I am happy with the new situation with the record label. But at the time I was like, what the fuck is this? I mean, I was very happy being with Music for Nations, because we had very good relationship with them, but at the end of the day, they are just a label. I mean, I don’t really care what the fuck-up is the label as long as they take care of us, if you know what I mean.

V. V.:В  Does anybody know what percentage of the population of your beloved Sweden is actually bloody musicians?

M. Å.: Ha-ha, I don’t know. It’s probably a high percentage of the people, but it’s a small country, you know. What can I say? I think most of our musicians are metal musicians…

V. V.: And what percentage of all musicians in the country are playing metal?

M. Å.: A lot of musicians in Sweden are metal musicians, but I think none of those people are professional musicians. We have a lot of studio musicians working with any type of artists. We have a lot of professional jazz and folk music musicians. I mean, that fact that we have many metal musicians is a fact that is part of the upbringing. Youth, if they are interested in music, there’s a big chance that they are interested in metal music and they can form a band. So it’s like the obligatory upbringing. Being once in life in a metal band, if you know what I mean…

V. V.: Yeah, but only 15 years ago it was like everybody knew that the biggest export of Sweden were Volvo and ABBA.

M. Å.: Yeah, that too. But I think that’s probably still the case. We have a lot of musical export from Sweden and a lot of metal, but you can't really compare it to Ikea, Volvo or Saab, you know, but certainly when it comes to culture I think the biggest export from Sweden is probably metal music.

V. V.: Yeah, so, you got it better than ABBA used to, right?

M. Å.: He-he-he-he, no, not really... Hold on a second, it’s my wife, hold on...

V. V.: OK, thanks for being with us. That was actually it. We know of so many marriages that broke up because the guy was all the time on tour and he was never picking up the phone when his lady was calling him.

M. Г….: He-he-he-he, I always do!

Copyright: Tangra Mega Rock