-just something i found a while back from http://members.nbci.com/vorph/metalbands/index.htm , some may or may not have read it before... just thought i'd post it...
The History of Opeth, as told by founder David "Dake" Isberg.
Part 1
It was a cold and dark midwinterday, Christopher Johnsson (THERION) and I had just made the descicion to let our project PROCREATION end, and I left Sweden to spend some time in Bangkok and Phuket Island in Thailand, asia... I had a lot of time to think about my future whilst walking around on the beaches and bars, and I came up with one major desciscion... I wanted to start a new dark band which had the capacibilaty to create it's own sound...
I spent every afternoon in Phuket in my bungalow reading books and one of them were "The Sunbird" by Wilbur Smith, nighttime I was dreaming about several scenes from that book, and I started to write stuff down for future lyricbases. OPETH was born...
I reached Stockholm on the 8th. of april 1990 and the very same day did I meet up with Richard and Dan, they were looking for a singer to their new band and I was a singer looking for band members...
OPETH first line up april - 90 - oct. 90:
David "Dake" Isberg
- vocals, lyrics, concept adviser and musical arrangements
Richard Nilsson
- Drums
Dan
- Guitar, main song writing
Mikael (not Akerfeldt)
- lead guitar
We were practising hard in the same rehearsal studio as TREBLINKA (now TIAMAT) and we sounded real shitty, like a weaker version of OBITUARY, and we were hardly looking for a bassplayer, and I found one... A rainy day in october did I run into my old friend Mikael Akerfeldt (is that name familliar with you???) and over a cup of java did he tell me that his band Euruption had split up, and I asked him to come down to play bass for us, and he was into it. A major surprise were waiting for us at the rehearsal studio... The other bandmembers had found a BASSPLAYER!!! and a great conflict broke out, I fired the other band members (which restarted as CROWLEY) and me and Mikael decided to go on with OPETH as a 2-pieceproject. On my demand Mikael started to write some of the darkest riffs heard since Possesseds "7 churches" or King Diamonds "Fatal Portrait". I wrote some lyrics and some songs were made like "Mark of the damned" and "Requiem of lost souls" based on my dreams in Thailand, we were offered to play support for THERION on a larger gig in in Stockholm, and we didn't refuse which we should have, because we had no musicians and we had only about 15 - 20 days ahead before the concertevening... WE SUCKED THAT NIGHT!!!
We borrowed the remaining parts of Euruption and ended up with Nick Döring on bass, Anders Nordin on drums and someone named Andreas on the rythmguitar.
Nick and Andreas left immediately after the show, me and Mikael continued with Anders Nordin (who were a disastrous drummer at the time, today he's a little more talented...)
Part 2
Back to november 1990 (I got a bit rushed out this is more complete...):
Me and Mikael were sitting in his bedroom, writing and arranging two complete tunes with his 12 W marshall. me unplugged and both of of us made up drums on his bed actually, these two songs was, as mentioned before "Requiem of lost souls" and "Mark of the damned", the first two ever recorded versions is to be found on the "Dark Phantasia -off. reh.-tape/april 1991", AND THEY STILL RULE!!!!
One of these days I hung out at THERION's reh.-place and they asked me about my band, and if we wanted to support them on a (at the time, over 450 people, "big" local death gala) night with bands such as Excecrution, Therion and this band I cannot remember the name of... AND I SAID YEZZZZZZ, WHY NOT???
We found our sessionmembers (because we wanted to go on as a 2-piece att the specific date) very quickly and started to rehearse very hard at the most strange places, such as schoollibrarys and laundryrooms, anywhere we may roomed, for a twenty minute set, our only problem was to get the whole band togewther at the same time, so most of the time one or two persons were missing, we didn't give a fuck, DAMN WE STRUGGLED FOR THAT SHOW!!!!
Finally you could find the band rehearsing unplugged at the room backstage (we didn't get a soundcheck that night) until the very last minute before the show... When we finally got up, were we met up by a huge crowd, which expected something by this "mystical" new band...
WE LOST IT!!! EVERYONE OF US... WE JUST LOST IT...
But some people did actually LIKE our ideas, and Nicklas Andersson of Entombed told me to go on and practise more, 'cause he like the "Possessedish" soundvibes we had at the time...
At last we started to rehearse as a "band" with Anders added on the drums, we rehearsed in schoolshed (YES) and the very local famous teenage hangout "LANTHEM".
We were looking for additional band members, and tried out a few, but they didn't work out for one or another reason... We booked us up at show number 2 in Gothenburg (about 600 km from the Stockholm area, were we live), once again wit THERION plus AT THE GATES, DESECRATOR, MEGASLAUGHTER and 1 or 2 more acts....
April 1991: 3 days before the gig did we still have no musicians filling out and we had some thoughts about cancelling, but at the same time did we decide to go on as 3-piece or whatever... Anyway, rehearsing our 25 - 30 minutes with three own songs and a cover version of Black Sabbaths "Sweet leaf" and someone was knocking at the door, it was the sleazerock band we sharde the studio with, they wanted to rehearse... So we went into the cafeteria and had something to drink, went back to the rehearsal room and asked if we could have their rehearsal hours and explained why, of course they gave us the time, and one of their guitarplayers and their bassman wanted to try out our songs and maybe play with us on the upcoming Gothenburgshow (add: these guys were enourmous great and technical musicians and thought it was very easy to do our stuff, LONG NOSES FELLAS, we gave them the lessons of their life's with complicated riffs and speeded arrangements...)
The guitar player was named Kim, and he turned out to be a "permanent" session member for a time to come, the bass players name was Johan De Farfalla, he played the gig and left and came back into the band in 1994, but that's a story you had to ask Mikael about... Anyway, they learned the songs, and we gave a fuck about sleepingand rehearsed every waken hours the remaining two days...
In Gothenburg no one ever heard about us, except our friends in At The..., Desecrator and some other dudes likes Kristian WhAlin etc. So we just hit the stage and maimed out our first song (we were nervous as shit...), ended it and looked out in the sold out hall (about 300 - 400 people), everyone was totally silent for a few seconds and the whole crowd were staring me straight in my face, I thought they hated our guts, one second later I heard a enormous roar from the pit, THEY ACTUALLY CAME UP ON STAGE TO TELL US HOW GREAT WE WERE!!!!!
The rest of the songs was just a blast of happines from our side, I even forgot to sing one of the verses of "Sweet Leaf" 'cause I felt adored for the first time in my life...
After the show did Kristian WhAlin offer me to do the vocals for the forthcoming LIERS IN WAIT cd, and I said yes...
The History of Opeth, as told by founder David "Dake" Isberg.
Part 1
It was a cold and dark midwinterday, Christopher Johnsson (THERION) and I had just made the descicion to let our project PROCREATION end, and I left Sweden to spend some time in Bangkok and Phuket Island in Thailand, asia... I had a lot of time to think about my future whilst walking around on the beaches and bars, and I came up with one major desciscion... I wanted to start a new dark band which had the capacibilaty to create it's own sound...
I spent every afternoon in Phuket in my bungalow reading books and one of them were "The Sunbird" by Wilbur Smith, nighttime I was dreaming about several scenes from that book, and I started to write stuff down for future lyricbases. OPETH was born...
I reached Stockholm on the 8th. of april 1990 and the very same day did I meet up with Richard and Dan, they were looking for a singer to their new band and I was a singer looking for band members...
OPETH first line up april - 90 - oct. 90:
David "Dake" Isberg
- vocals, lyrics, concept adviser and musical arrangements
Richard Nilsson
- Drums
Dan
- Guitar, main song writing
Mikael (not Akerfeldt)
- lead guitar
We were practising hard in the same rehearsal studio as TREBLINKA (now TIAMAT) and we sounded real shitty, like a weaker version of OBITUARY, and we were hardly looking for a bassplayer, and I found one... A rainy day in october did I run into my old friend Mikael Akerfeldt (is that name familliar with you???) and over a cup of java did he tell me that his band Euruption had split up, and I asked him to come down to play bass for us, and he was into it. A major surprise were waiting for us at the rehearsal studio... The other bandmembers had found a BASSPLAYER!!! and a great conflict broke out, I fired the other band members (which restarted as CROWLEY) and me and Mikael decided to go on with OPETH as a 2-pieceproject. On my demand Mikael started to write some of the darkest riffs heard since Possesseds "7 churches" or King Diamonds "Fatal Portrait". I wrote some lyrics and some songs were made like "Mark of the damned" and "Requiem of lost souls" based on my dreams in Thailand, we were offered to play support for THERION on a larger gig in in Stockholm, and we didn't refuse which we should have, because we had no musicians and we had only about 15 - 20 days ahead before the concertevening... WE SUCKED THAT NIGHT!!!
We borrowed the remaining parts of Euruption and ended up with Nick Döring on bass, Anders Nordin on drums and someone named Andreas on the rythmguitar.
Nick and Andreas left immediately after the show, me and Mikael continued with Anders Nordin (who were a disastrous drummer at the time, today he's a little more talented...)
Part 2
Back to november 1990 (I got a bit rushed out this is more complete...):
Me and Mikael were sitting in his bedroom, writing and arranging two complete tunes with his 12 W marshall. me unplugged and both of of us made up drums on his bed actually, these two songs was, as mentioned before "Requiem of lost souls" and "Mark of the damned", the first two ever recorded versions is to be found on the "Dark Phantasia -off. reh.-tape/april 1991", AND THEY STILL RULE!!!!
One of these days I hung out at THERION's reh.-place and they asked me about my band, and if we wanted to support them on a (at the time, over 450 people, "big" local death gala) night with bands such as Excecrution, Therion and this band I cannot remember the name of... AND I SAID YEZZZZZZ, WHY NOT???
We found our sessionmembers (because we wanted to go on as a 2-piece att the specific date) very quickly and started to rehearse very hard at the most strange places, such as schoollibrarys and laundryrooms, anywhere we may roomed, for a twenty minute set, our only problem was to get the whole band togewther at the same time, so most of the time one or two persons were missing, we didn't give a fuck, DAMN WE STRUGGLED FOR THAT SHOW!!!!
Finally you could find the band rehearsing unplugged at the room backstage (we didn't get a soundcheck that night) until the very last minute before the show... When we finally got up, were we met up by a huge crowd, which expected something by this "mystical" new band...
WE LOST IT!!! EVERYONE OF US... WE JUST LOST IT...
But some people did actually LIKE our ideas, and Nicklas Andersson of Entombed told me to go on and practise more, 'cause he like the "Possessedish" soundvibes we had at the time...
At last we started to rehearse as a "band" with Anders added on the drums, we rehearsed in schoolshed (YES) and the very local famous teenage hangout "LANTHEM".
We were looking for additional band members, and tried out a few, but they didn't work out for one or another reason... We booked us up at show number 2 in Gothenburg (about 600 km from the Stockholm area, were we live), once again wit THERION plus AT THE GATES, DESECRATOR, MEGASLAUGHTER and 1 or 2 more acts....
April 1991: 3 days before the gig did we still have no musicians filling out and we had some thoughts about cancelling, but at the same time did we decide to go on as 3-piece or whatever... Anyway, rehearsing our 25 - 30 minutes with three own songs and a cover version of Black Sabbaths "Sweet leaf" and someone was knocking at the door, it was the sleazerock band we sharde the studio with, they wanted to rehearse... So we went into the cafeteria and had something to drink, went back to the rehearsal room and asked if we could have their rehearsal hours and explained why, of course they gave us the time, and one of their guitarplayers and their bassman wanted to try out our songs and maybe play with us on the upcoming Gothenburgshow (add: these guys were enourmous great and technical musicians and thought it was very easy to do our stuff, LONG NOSES FELLAS, we gave them the lessons of their life's with complicated riffs and speeded arrangements...)
The guitar player was named Kim, and he turned out to be a "permanent" session member for a time to come, the bass players name was Johan De Farfalla, he played the gig and left and came back into the band in 1994, but that's a story you had to ask Mikael about... Anyway, they learned the songs, and we gave a fuck about sleepingand rehearsed every waken hours the remaining two days...
In Gothenburg no one ever heard about us, except our friends in At The..., Desecrator and some other dudes likes Kristian WhAlin etc. So we just hit the stage and maimed out our first song (we were nervous as shit...), ended it and looked out in the sold out hall (about 300 - 400 people), everyone was totally silent for a few seconds and the whole crowd were staring me straight in my face, I thought they hated our guts, one second later I heard a enormous roar from the pit, THEY ACTUALLY CAME UP ON STAGE TO TELL US HOW GREAT WE WERE!!!!!
The rest of the songs was just a blast of happines from our side, I even forgot to sing one of the verses of "Sweet Leaf" 'cause I felt adored for the first time in my life...
After the show did Kristian WhAlin offer me to do the vocals for the forthcoming LIERS IN WAIT cd, and I said yes...
