OPETH Guitarist: 'I Think A Lot Of The Band's Fans Aren't Quite Open-Minded'

On May 14, Unsung Melody conducted an interview with guitarist Fredrik Åkesson of Swedish progressive metallers OPETH. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Unsung Melody: "Heritage" is the new album from you guys. It's much more of a melodic album than previous releases. Tell us a bit about the writing process of this record. Was the idea of keeping the vocals mainly clean the goal from the beginning or how did the album take shape?

Fredrik: Well, we had the goal to play the heavy riffs. Like the neck pick-up positions is a bit more muddier sound. Mike [guitarist/vocalist Mikael Åkerfeldt] wanted to do something different from the beginning. That is for sure. He wrote a couple of songs first. They were more in the same vein as the previous album, "Watershed". Then, he deleted those and started off new. The edition of the song "Heritage" was created then I think. Where he wanted to go. The recording process, Mike does a really good demo, so we kind of carbon-copied the demo and tried to spice it up a little bit.

Unsung Melody: You guys have always been known to take chances and the end result is seemingly always positive. I'm really intrigued by your fan base, because when most bands change their sound as radically as you guys do, there's generally a strong backlash. Why do you think your fans are more receptive to change than most?

Fredrik: I think all OPETH albums are different than each other. So, that's always been a part of OPETH. Maybe they expect that we do that, where every album sounds different. I still think the "Heritage" album has a lot of the OPETH sound to it. It's not like we did a pop album or anything like that. It's very dark, moody and intense in different spaces, but in a different way, of course. I think a lot of the band's fans aren't quite open-minded; maybe it takes the a little bit of time to digest each album. Which I can understand. I think it was very important to do a different album, for Mike at least, and the whole band as well.

Unsung Melody: It's always good to re-invent yourself. With your fans, there never really seems to be any disappointment and that's awesome. So, that's very cool.

Fredrik: Yeah, the set that we play now on this tour, I think a few people thought that Mike did not want to go back to doing the growl vocals, I think. But on this tour, we play a lot of those songs. It blends well. It's good dynamics when mixed with the songs from the "Heritage" album and we mix it up with a lot of the old stuff.

Unsung Melody: "Heritage" was released in September 2011. So, most bands seem to do a two-to-three-year cycle of touring for an album. If that's the case with you guys, have you began writing for the next album or can we expect much more touring?

Fredrik: No, this is the last tour we are doing with "Heritage". This is the third American tour that we do. We are doing four festivals in the summer in Europe. Meanwhile, we are going to continue writing. Mike has already demoed three songs, so it's cooking. It's a bit too early to say what it's going to be like. Our goal is to start recording in September or October this year.

Read the entire interview from Unsung Melody. You can also listen to the chat using the audio player below.

Interview (audio):