Alright you may have won on one end, but just because Melinda was a made up character doesnt mean she was a whore...And besides some of the other content in the lyrics actually does revolve around realtionships read more here http://www.mindspring.com/~raggije/reviews/OPETHREVIEW.htm
Another short Interview I read
Yikes, I scored an interview with Opeth, one of the best metal bands in the history of time, as far as I'm concerned. Their heady cocktail of offbeat death metal and 70s prog rock is nothing short of wondrous, and with new album Still Life freshly released I emailed mainman Mikael Åkerfeldt (along with about a hundred and fifty other people, apparently); he was good enough to reply almost immediately, and the results make interesting reading, particularly the bout of Tourette's syndrome around the middle:
Still Life would appear to be another concept album... more of a love story than a ghost story this time, though. Tell us a little about the concept, and why you think having a central theme running through your albums' lyrics is important to you.
Yes, it's a new concept again. I started writing on the story when we got back home from the My Arms, Your Hearse recording sessions. It's basically a made up fairytale dealing with the good vs evil theme. However, I wanted it to be a bit more interesting than that, so I basically wrote it in reverse. What people normally regard as "good" is the bad, or maybe evil, part of this story, and vice versa. The main character is attracting sympathy from the readers, although he is not your every day "good guy", if you know what I mean. I find it interesting to write in these ways as it binds everything together in a very special way. I'm not sure if I'm gonna do any more concepts on the coming albums, as it's pretty hard to do; it takes a lot of time.
Is Melinda, the girl in the story, representative of someone you know or knew, or have you just made her up for the purposes of the album?
She is made up for this story. However, I try to judge everything that happens in the story as if it would happen to me, and Melinda is reacting the same way as I suppose a normal woman would do. It's basically written with a touch of common sense in regard of different situations while the overall picture of this story is more or less absurd and unreal.
Left to right: Martin Mendez, Mikael Åkerfeldt, Martin Lopez, Peter Lindgren. No hang on, it's Martin Lopez on the left. No, er, hang on.... well, they both look exactly the damn same anyway.One thing I noticed about the new album is that certain themes are repeated in different parts of the songs, which is not really something you've done before. Is this a deliberate attempt at more traditional songwriting, or just something you wanted to try out?
Yes, we have a few riffs that actually come back. I don't really know why it is so, but it is definitely not any commercial attempt (perish the thought!). I try not to think too much when I write music; it won't do me no good. I write what I like myself and it just comes out the way it does.
The end of "Serenity Painted Death" cuts out suddenly in the middle of a musical phrase. I find this extremely annoying! Was this deliberate (and if so, why?) or a mastering error?
A lot of people are asking me about that. It's a deliberate move, really. We found out that the 4 last tracks would have fade-outs, and we wanted to break the "trend". We also figured that people would be baffled about it, and I guess that's just what happened. I think it's pretty cool; it causes a very deep "empty" feeling when it ends so abruptly.
Another short Interview I read
Yikes, I scored an interview with Opeth, one of the best metal bands in the history of time, as far as I'm concerned. Their heady cocktail of offbeat death metal and 70s prog rock is nothing short of wondrous, and with new album Still Life freshly released I emailed mainman Mikael Åkerfeldt (along with about a hundred and fifty other people, apparently); he was good enough to reply almost immediately, and the results make interesting reading, particularly the bout of Tourette's syndrome around the middle:
Still Life would appear to be another concept album... more of a love story than a ghost story this time, though. Tell us a little about the concept, and why you think having a central theme running through your albums' lyrics is important to you.
Yes, it's a new concept again. I started writing on the story when we got back home from the My Arms, Your Hearse recording sessions. It's basically a made up fairytale dealing with the good vs evil theme. However, I wanted it to be a bit more interesting than that, so I basically wrote it in reverse. What people normally regard as "good" is the bad, or maybe evil, part of this story, and vice versa. The main character is attracting sympathy from the readers, although he is not your every day "good guy", if you know what I mean. I find it interesting to write in these ways as it binds everything together in a very special way. I'm not sure if I'm gonna do any more concepts on the coming albums, as it's pretty hard to do; it takes a lot of time.
Is Melinda, the girl in the story, representative of someone you know or knew, or have you just made her up for the purposes of the album?
She is made up for this story. However, I try to judge everything that happens in the story as if it would happen to me, and Melinda is reacting the same way as I suppose a normal woman would do. It's basically written with a touch of common sense in regard of different situations while the overall picture of this story is more or less absurd and unreal.
Yes, we have a few riffs that actually come back. I don't really know why it is so, but it is definitely not any commercial attempt (perish the thought!). I try not to think too much when I write music; it won't do me no good. I write what I like myself and it just comes out the way it does.
The end of "Serenity Painted Death" cuts out suddenly in the middle of a musical phrase. I find this extremely annoying! Was this deliberate (and if so, why?) or a mastering error?
A lot of people are asking me about that. It's a deliberate move, really. We found out that the 4 last tracks would have fade-outs, and we wanted to break the "trend". We also figured that people would be baffled about it, and I guess that's just what happened. I think it's pretty cool; it causes a very deep "empty" feeling when it ends so abruptly.
