OPETH's FREDRIK ÅKESSON: 'Heritage' Was 'An Album That We Needed To Do'

Planet Music recently conducted an interview with guitarist Fredrik Åkesson of Swedish progressive metallers OPETH. You can now watch the chat below. A couple of excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On his contribution to OPETH's latest album, "Pale Communion":

Fredrik: "Mikael [Åkerfeldt, guitar/vocals] wrote the entire album, but I think everybody in the band put their type of… the final product, everybody put their type of playing into it and boosted it up, which is a good thing. I came up with guitar solos and stuff like that, but when it comes to the melodies and lyrics and songs, Mikael wrote the entire album this time. We worked on a couple of ideas, but they didn't happen this time around. But I think it came out great the way it did."

"[Mikael's] always been the pilot of the band, and he has a unique creativity, I think. So I don't wanna be the guy that tries to push in ideas. But I do play him ideas, and sometimes he really likes it."

On the fans' mixed reactions to OPETH's 2011 "Heritage" album:

Fredrik: "Well, it has some jazzy elements, I think, but some parts of it, it's a really dark album, I thnk. And I'm proud that we made that bold step, but I also could understand [why] some people got upset or had a problem to relate with it. But I think it was an album that we needed to do, to do something different. Since Mikael is the main writer in the band, he has a need to do something different and branch out every now and then. It's a creative thing and it's the way it turned out. It's not that we are turning our backs on the death metal past with the band. If you come and see us live now, we play a lot of that stuff, and we still enjoy it very much to play as well.

"If you look back on the 'Heritage' album, still a lot of people came to the shows and enjoyed it. So… I don't know. I don't read all the complaints on the Internet."

On the use of growling, death metal-style vocals in OPETH's music:

Fredrik: "If the song doesn't request it, it's gonna be a bit cheesy to put it in just to have it as an element there. But it's not ruled out for the future that [we might incorporate that style of vocals into the music again]. It was even talked about to bring it in on this album in one song. The song 'River' was actually gonna be even longer and more freaked out, more extreme at the end. So it was actually talked about. But I think we pushed it a bit far when we did the first tour with 'Heritage' and that might have confused a lot of people — that we didn't play any of the back-catalog songs. I think that pushed it even further in a way, because, looking back at the discography of OPETH, you still have 'Damnation', which is a very calm album and it doesn't have any heavy moments at all. If you compare it to 'Heritage', it definitely has heavy moments, but in a different way."