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By: Dennis Cook
Though classified as "heavy metal," there's a lot more going on in Opeth than hoarse demon screams, wiggly-wiggly guitar acrobatics and gonad rattling rhythms. They've got that stuff, too, but there's a melodic thread and beyond-genre thrust to Sweden's Opeth that's very much in tune with the thicker, creepier side of the '60s freak rock explosion, bits of Blue Cheer and Vanilla Fudge emerging in Opeth's elongated explorations. While getting happily eviscerated by them last year in San Francisco (see review here), I thought how well they would have slotted in at the original Fillmore West or Winterland on a bill with Grand Funk Railroad and The Troggs.
"Yeah, I think so," chuckles Mikael Åkerfeldt, Opeth's leader-mastermind-singer-guitarist, and a far, far more instantly likeable chap than you'd ever expect coming from metal's dark cauldrons. "With the last album [2008's stunning Watershed] we listened to lots of psychedelic music, so this is the perfect place for us. I listen to a lot of West Coast bands and also lots of U.K. psychedelia and prog-rock."
Opeth holds their own with the best of the black t-shirt brigade but allows in the nuances and romance of early Yes and Genesis before things got too slick. They tap into non-metal sources in the continuum of heavy music, and in the process have created one of the most unique, ambitious sounds in their chosen field.
"The progressive rock scene of the early '70s and some of the symphonic rock bands of the same period impressed me in the early days," says Åkerfeldt. "For me, being a musician, I don't see any reason you should have boundaries; that's only going to limit yourself as a musician. Perhaps in the past I saw myself more as a metal musician, now I just see myself as a musician and I'm interested in all sorts of music. In my band I don't want to have limits. We just put everything in there that we think sounds good. I'm older now and I don't want to write music just to shock people now."
The band has been on a steady evolution since they formed in Stockholm in 1990, with each subsequent album revealing further complexities and greater emotional and storytelling range. Each record, from early highlight Morningrise (1995) to fan-beloved Blackwater Park (2001) to the distinctive flowering of Watershed, contains a marbled-in urgency, where even the simmering builds and atmospheric sections are restlessly gobbling miles, always moving onward from where we presently find them. All of which makes for thoroughly absorbing listening, which they ably translate to the live arena. Even fresh on the heels of its release, the Watershed material was already mutating well in concert last year and it's certain its traveled even further as the band embarks on their new North American tour, which began a few days ago (tour dates here).
 Mikael Åkerfeldt by Daniel Falk |
"There was something that happened while writing the songs for Watershed, where I said, 'Fuck it,' in a way," says Åkerfeldt. "There's obviously moments on it that hardcore metalheads will hate but it doesn't really matter. That's one of the beautiful things about playing in this band, we jump between styles and still make it sound like something that's ours."
Their openness to beauty actually makes Opeth's heavier moments that much denser, that much more able to impact us on a deeper level following the prettier, calmer sections.
"One of the most important things in this band is the dynamics," observes Åkerfeldt. "We use all the instruments. Our drummer can, obviously, play all the heavy stuff but he can also swing and play laid-back. And I use my voice in the same way. Good, clean vocals are just part of our sound. When I started with the band I only did the screams because I didn't realize that we could put the clean singing into our songs in those days, and I didn't have any confidence singing either. It took us a few years to incorporate the clean vocals. It's on the first album but only as a spice. Then with time it became more integrated with our sound, so now it's more 50-50."
"First and foremost, when I listen to our stuff I want it to be good songs. I don't want to get bored listening to it, either," continues Åkerfeldt. "I have a tendency to write long songs, and having songs of the length we do requires that something happen at all times. But, I've never really struggled to make a song interesting. It's been pretty natural. We don't go out of our way to make things this way, it just happens on its own."
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