OPETH, KATATONIA Interviewed In Portland (Video)

Northern Fury conducted separate interviews with bassist Martin Mendez of Swedish progressive metallers OPETH and guitarist/co-founder Anders "Blakkheim" Nyström of Swedish dark rockers KATATONIA on October 16, 2011 in Portland, Oregon. You can now watch the resulting footage below.

OPETH's new album, "Heritage", sold 19,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to debut at position No. 19 on The Billboard 200 chart. The band's previous studio CD, 2008's "Watershed", opened with more than 19,000 units to land at No. 23.

"Watershed" was the follow-up to the band's acclaimed "Ghost Reveries" CD, which debuted at No. 64 on the Billboard chart back in September 2005 with first-week sales of just under 15,000.

OPETH's 2003 album, "Damnation", premiered with a little over 5,000 copies.

KATATONIA played four shows in Scandinavia last month, hitting the capital cites of Copenhagen, Oslo, Helsinki and, of course, the band's hometown of Stockholm. The concerts, which were part of the 20th-anniversary "Last Fair Day Gone Night Tour 2011", saw the band perform two sets. The first set consisted of a performance of the entire "Last Fair Deal Gone Down" album front to back. The second set was a mixture of carefully picked songs from the band's extensive catalogue.

KATATONIA's May 6, 2011 concert at Koko in London, England was professionally filmed/recorded for a future DVD release.

KATATONIA released special editions of the critically acclaimed albums "Last Fair Deal Gone Down" and "Night Is The New Day" on April 25. The 10th-anniversary edition "Last Fair Deal Gone Down" was presented in deluxe mediabook packaging, as a two-disc edition containing tracks from the now hard-to-find singles "Teargas" and "Tonight's Music". The reissue of 2009's "Night Is The New Day" includes bonus tracks from the "The Longest Year" EP. Both titles were presented with newly updated cover artwork courtesy of original artist Travis Smith.