OPETH : Land Of The Dread

-You used to be on Music for Nations, and, when it ceased his activities, on Roadrunner: how did this happen and are you happy with it?

-Per : Yes, so far so good, I would say, and I think that Roadrunner have, so far, done an excellent job, even if the album has only been out for three or four weeks now. And another good thing is that you can actually find our album in many record shops, nowadays, which is very good!

-What was it like to be part of the Sound of the underground Tour (Lamb Of God, Devildriver, Throwdown, Clutch, High On Fire,…)

-Per : It was a lot of fun, actually, much more fun than any of us expected. For us, personally or as a band, it just seemed a good thing to get together again and start to play live, but we met a lot of very cool people and we already knew some of the bands, and the whole point was to play our music in front of people that might have never heard of us before, and I think we got to play to a lot of people that wouldn't have checked out Opeth if we hadn't been on that bill. Hopefully, it did us good, and if it didn't do us any good, we had a good time doing it.

Certain shows were very good, extremely good crowds for us, like in Canada, where there were amazing crowds, it's been a lot better than we expected it to be. In general it was very good, I would say.

-How’s Martin Lopez today? (he was ill during the tour)

Per : He’s not with us on this tour, because he’s not feeling very well and he’s back in

Sweden, resting, so we have another Martin, doing this tour with us : he was in Bloodbath, he’s is also in Witchery and he's a very good drummer and a nice guy, so he's gonna help us out for the time being.

-Per, you’re now a permanent member of Opeth : is Spiritual Beggars a thing of the past for you? Or do you intend to share your time between the two bands?

-Per : No, Spiritual Beggars are still going, but, in that band, we already have Michael Amott and Charlie D’Angelo who are both in Arch Enemy, they’re really busy with that and I’m really busy with Opeth so I guess Spiritual Beggars has to take a back seat and we're constantly talking to each other, to see if there's any free time to do this, but it seems like it's gonna be hard to put something together this year, because we're gonna be out on tour with both Arch Enemy and Opeth, until Christmas. Maybe next year!

-What did your arrival bring to the band?

-Per : Hopefully, something good. It was very important for the guys to never stagnate and continue to develop. I think it's interesting for Mikael to have a new instrument in the band, as far as arrangements are concerned. Hopefully, it adds a new flavour and some cool vintage sounds… I've been playing with them for 2 years, so I guess both the audience and the band members are used to me being here…

-Where do you think this respect surrounding Opeth comes from?

-Per : People are too nice to us! Maybe it's the fact that the band has been around for fifteen years, and all the bands who have been around for a long time and haven't compromised their sound deserve a lot of respect. If they're good or bad is for people to judge, but I think that alone deserves respect.

-So today there’s this new album, ‘Ghost reveries’ : what hides behind this title?

-Per : I think initially Mikael's intention with the lyrics was to write, not a concept album, but maybe a more obvious theme than what finally ended up on the record, and 'Ghost reveries' was maybe a good name for the lyrical theme, like the vibe of the whole thing, but I guess when he starts to write, he just goes off and he might end up all over the place, so the concept album didn't really happen, but some songs are connected together, lyrically.

-About the name of Opeth, I read that it comes from a lost African city, in a Wilbur Smith novel?

-Per : Yes, and I think the novel is called 'Thunder' (?), and Opeth was a moon, the name of a moon, and it was spelt OPET, so I guess they misspelled it when they started the band : so nobody can sue us now.

-Can we say it’s a mixture of the musical tendencies of the last two albums of the band?

-Per : Yes, a little bit, there's elements from 'Damnation', and maybe a song or two could have been on that album as well, as far as the heavy songs go, I would say it's a little mish-mash of all the previous Opeth albums, with a little bit of old school sounding riffs on this one as well, so, that's pretty much what Mikael would say, a combination of 'Damnation' and 'Deliverance'.

-With hindsight, do you regret to have issued two albums instead of one, maybe double, at the time?

-Per : No, I know that they were really happy that they got to make the 'Damnation' album for sure, that was more or less an experiment which turned out really good, at least for my taste: it seems it has been very well received as well and the songs we play off that album seem to be very popular with the crowds.

-‘Ghost reveries’ was produced by Jens Borgen from Soilwork : why?

-Per : Well, he has worked with Katatonia as well, and Bloodbath ; he's quite young, but very professional, very good at work and has very good ideas about sounds and arrangements.

It's very good to have an outside input when you're recording, because otherwise you can go blind in the studio. It's very good to have someone telling you to fuck off, when it sucks or whatever! I know Michael asked Steven Wilson, who had done the last three Opeth albums, but I think he wasn't available during the time we rehearsed and everything, everyone got used to the idea of doing it ourselves, together with Jens, and I think it made us a lot more confident as well.

-Weren’t you afraid he would give to Opeth the Goteborg sound you dislike?

-Per : I don't think anyone has really thought that much about what we are supposed to be,

I think we just tried to focus on the music and write good music, it might end up a little bit here and there, but never thought about it like the band belongs to a scene. But there were a lot of good death metal bands in Stockholm, like Dismember and Doom and Unleashed, and others…

-What has been the most seventies influential bands for Opeth? Krimson, Genesis, Can, Amon Duul, Pink Floyd…

-Per : I guess that all of us in this band are music nerds and record collectors : personally, my biggest influence would be Jimi Hendrix I guess, without a doubt, but I listen to all kinds of music, new and old, both metal and not metal. I like King Crimson a lot, it was a very important band and it has been very important for the development of Opeth's music during the years, as Michael's the main songwriter and he's got a great interest in 60s and 70s prog rock. But I'm not that sure about the Genesis influence!

-And Whitesnake?

-Per : Yes, Michael is a fan. I like Whitesnake too…up to a certain point : I think the last album that I really liked is 'Saints and sinners', from '82. I saw them on that tour and then, I lost interest in that band.

-Could you say some records which changed your life?

Per : 'Band of gypsies', by Jimi Hendrix, $$$'Vision of the great beyond' by Mahavishnu Orchestra, 'Black Metal' by Venom, 'Bitch is Blue' by Miles Davis, 'Rock for life' by Bad Brains, 'Divine Punishment' by Diamanda Galas, $$$'End of silence' by Rollins band…

-Very eclectic! Will we see a video, or several maybe, for ‘Ghost Reverie’?

-Per : Yes, we did a video while we were touring the States, we did it in one day in Los Angeles, and it's for the track called "Grand $$$ duration". It looks really professional, they started to show it on MTV2 in the States, not in Europe yet, but hopefully they will, I'm pretty sure Roadrunner will force everybody to show it! It's directed by the same guy who did the video with Lemmy and Wino from The Obsessed for the Dave Grohl's Probot project and other videos I can't remember right now, but it looks pretty metal, I would say : girls, snakes, dark rooms, the band headbanging, so I guess it's all good!

-After ‘Damnation’, Mikael wanted to take a break : so, how will be the next year for Opeth : busy or lazy?

-Per : It's gonna be really busy : we're gonna be on the road until the day before Christmas Eve this year, and, after a break, we'll start again in February, but I don't know where yet, it depends if the record does well and if the people still want to come and see us! We're out on an European tour now, and we're gonna go back to the US, and do a headline tour in October, and then another European tour in November and December : we're gonna do more dates in France, like Marseille and Lyon.

-After 15 years of Opeth, since ‘Orchid’, and through the success of ‘Blackwater Park’ and the following albums, how do you judge the career of the band and what are your ambitions for the future?

-Per : I think, when I talk to the guys and listen to what they say about past albums, that they are pretty happy with their back catalogue. I know bands that their first albums, and it doesn't seems to be the case with Opeth, they seem pretty happy with them, and it's always hard in retrospect to see if you fulfilled everything that you tried to achieve, because, when you are in the middle of it, it's easier to say what you want to achieve with something. But I think they succeeded in the sense that every Opeth album sounds a little bit different from the one before and that's really important for this band.

-Something to add, about Spiritual Beggars maybe?

-Per : Unfortunately, there's not much to say about Beggars for the time being, we released a new album this summer in Europe and we really had no time to go on tour because everybody was so busy. Hopefully, at some point, we'll be able to do a short European tour. Last time we played, at this place, in Paris, we had a great evening. It was a kind of 'Hard and Heavy award show, I think, and it was a fantastic gig. For Opeth's sake, I think it's fantastic that the gig has been sold out as quickly, and it's definitely worth it to come back to do another one, in December. I thank everybody who goes up, buys our records and comes to the show.

-Wouldn't be a good idea to make a tour with both Arch Enemy and Opeth?

-Per : They did a UK tour a couple of years ago, but it's always about timing and schedules.

So far, it's been impossible, really.

Interview made in Paris on September 13th, 2OO5.

Thanks to Laure and Alexandra, from Roadrunner records.