Opeth - Heritage
- Thread starter Spruce Goose
- Start date
Blitzkrieg
Master Exploder
Kinda makes you think it could be under a different name then, since the lineup has undergone changes also.
salty
Member
Shadow298
UNLEASH THE GUAN
I think that this album will be a good one.
Mikael does great growls but his classic rock style voice is superb and the sound that they have been developing of late is more of that classic rock/early metal style.
I think that they will deliver a great album and once again people will have to look at the state of metal to see where it is going and what they want to do with their own styles and bands.
Mikael does great growls but his classic rock style voice is superb and the sound that they have been developing of late is more of that classic rock/early metal style.
I think that they will deliver a great album and once again people will have to look at the state of metal to see where it is going and what they want to do with their own styles and bands.
phlogiston
Bejabbers!
New Interview and Album tracklisting lengths.
1. Heritage 02:05
2. The Devil's Orchard 06:40
3. I Feel The Dark 06:40
4. Slither 04:03
5. Nepenthe 05:40
6. Haxprocess 06:57
7. Famine 08:32
8. The Lines In My Hand 03:49
9. Folklore 08:19
10. Marrow Of The Earth 04:19
57:04
Mikael: How are you doing, Mike?
Mike: I’m doing good, man. How are you?
Mikael: We’re doing some press stuff in New York today; not much else.
Mike: How did your photo shoot go?
Mikael: Well, it was kind of regular. We tried to look cool. It went well.
Mike: How do you feel as a musician with over 20 years of involvement in one band? Are you ever surprised you’ve lasted for so long pursuing your passion with Opeth?
Mikael: Oh, I don’t know. Well, I guess it’s twenty years – twenty one years really. It’s a long time. If you’d asked me twenty years ago if Opeth would last this long, I would have said, “Not a chance”. You get sucked into this business. I guess it’s like any other kind of business in a lot of ways… and before you know it you’re in the middle of a career. That’s what happened to us, you know? We just continued making albums and touring. I made up my mind a long time ago that I wanted to be a musician and haven’t had the chance really to pursue anything else. It’s just been working and working at our music, and now here we are.
Mike: Do you feel your inspiration to write music still comes from the same place?
Mikael: Well, it’s still from music I listen to most of the time, I guess. I’m constantly playing music. Music is still as strong as ever. I’m still buying shit-loads of records all the time, trying to find new inspiration, but also I just to listen to music. Even if I wasn’t writing myself, I would still be a big consumer of music. My inspiration to write our material comes from other people’s music, and that has changed a little bit over the years. When I was fifteen I was listening to music like Merciful Fate or something like them to gather inspiration, where now I’m listing to music that is coming out right now. You can only buy Don't Break the Oath so many times, right?
(laughs)
Mike: Heritage will be your tenth album, and your third album on Roadrunner Records. Did you have anything different in mind that you really wanted to accomplish on this tenth album?
Mikael: I just wanted it to be different. I had a pretty strong urge to do it differently and not be stuck in a rut, so to speak. I’d like to think that every album we’ve done has been an album that reflects what we really wanted to do at the time. This time around, when I started writing, I was a bit disillusioned with what I wanted to do and what we should do as a band. I didn’t want us to get stuck with a sound. I get restless and when that happens it’s just time to move on and try something different, and that’s what we did with this album. We just wrote eleven or twelve songs that sounded like stuff that I would want to listen to now, rather than writing stuff that sounds like things we’ve already done before. We have always tried to do records that we want to hear. There’s no exception to that rule with Heritage, but it’s a different sounding album than our previous ones.
Mike: Can fans hear anything from the new album on your website yet?
Mikael: No, nothing.
Mike: If I’m reading my internet bits correctly, ‘The Devil's Orchard’ is set to be your first single, correct? Are you going to pop that online to give fans a taste of the new material?
Mikael: We don’t know yet. The album is coming in September sometime. I’m assuming there will be a preview around that time. If I could chose, we wouldn’t put anything out until the album release date. That’s one thing that we want to rebel against. Maybe me more than the others in Opeth, but I want to rebel against the whole internet based thing with music. Updates from the bands in the studio, twitter pictures of recording sessions, and pre-released singles all seem to be the norm on the internet. I don’t want our music to be first heard like that, you know? I’m a YouTube consumer too… but I don't want our stuff to get an advance release and sound bad. I understand the business model for music has changed, and that is just how it works these days, but I’m really not into the whole internet hype for new albums.
Mike: Would you do anything for your fans on your website - something exclusive for fans who pre-order Heritage? Limited artwork, or autographed versions?
Mikael: I’m not sure about that. That’s more up to the label. I don’t think in terms of promotion when it comes to music. For me, once the album is done, my work is pretty much done. I don’t think in terms of how to sell it once it’s done. There’s guys in bands that do that and they are entrepreneurs in a way, which is good for them. I’m just a rocking dude, you know? The work feels like it’s done once I have produced an album. Then we will go out on tour which is also my type of work, you know? Everything surrounding a release and promotion and interviews and bundles and packages for selling albums, that’s the record labels and management’s job. I’m kind of shooting my load all over the making of the record. I don't really have much else to offer after that.
Mike: After the Watershed tour, you did a half dozen special live shows, in which you played the entire Blackwater Park album live to celebrate your 20th anniversary. Fans flew in from all over the world to see those shows. How much preparation did you put into those performances as a band?
Mikael: It wasn’t too much preparation. Many of these songs we have been playing for a while already anyways. There were a few songs from Blackwater Park that we hadn’t played in a while. We were doing that album in entirety and we had to rehearse a few of those songs to get them into shape to play live. And some of the old stuff – the second part of the set at those shows was kind of a chronologic selection of our material and there were bits and pieces of material there that we’d never really played before. So we had to rehearse there a bit more. But all in all I don’t think we spent too much time preparing. We just perceived it as just another few gigs, but slightly longer and at exclusive venues.
Those shows were more for the fans, you know? We had meetings with fans before every show. I thought that was going to be weird. Don’t get me wrong, I like my fans, but when it’s staged like that, with signing sessions where somebody tells you to do something, I generally go into it thinking the whole thing might not work out well, mostly because I go in thinking that it’s not a natural occurrence. But it WAS nice. The people that we met at these shows, it was a pleasure to meet them and get the chance to talk to them, you know?
Mike: I can see how the meet and greets could feel mechanical for you guys. But at these shows, with fans flying in from around the world, I think you were getting a true representation of your die-hards.
Mikael: Yes, right. I just worried that because it’s something we had been told to do, that feeling might show through from us to our fans. That would be terrible. I was a bit worried about that, but it really worked out fine. The band really had a good time doing those things at those shows and we might continue doing that for fans down the road.
Mike: One of those celebratory shows was the Royal Albert Hall show in the UK, most recently released on DVD in two different formats. Are you happy with this footage? Do you feel it captures a live Opeth show accurately?
Mikael: Yes, it’s decent. I only watched it once when I edited the thing. I was there taking part in the editing of the footage before it was released. That’s the only time I’ve seen it. I’ve never really listened to it since we performed live at the show. I’m very happy with the sleeve for the DVD, with the whole gimmicky Deep Purple sort of thing. I was very happy with the way that turned out.
Mike: At what point during your discography do you feel Opeth really hit its stride, Mikael? Do you feel that this album is the one fans enjoy the most as well?
Mikael: I think we were pretty well prepared on our first album. We’d been around for a while before we recorded our first album. I think we were pretty much done by the time we did our first album. I can’t say that we’ve been working our way to up to certain albums or anything. I think at the time, when the first album came out, that is what we wanted to do. It was a collection of songs that we had been playing for a couple of years, and we did that album well. It’s not like we were learning much at the recording of that album. I think we were pretty much done establishing our sound at that point. But obviously, things happened in the late nineties and early in the new millennium with Blackwater Park. That album catapulted us into a different level, and all of a sudden we were a professional band on a global scale, touring more than we ever had. That’s when we became professional musicians, I guess. Musically, I don’t particularly think Blackwater Park is better than any of our other albums, you know? It just seemed to be more appealing to our audience, I guess.
Mike: Listening to any Opeth album is an interesting experience for the listener. Your music can be punishingly heavy and then switch to something very sensitive and technical, often within the same song. Do you find your audiences are primarily metal fans, or do you have a good representation of fans that enjoy your mellower side?
Mikael: We certainly do have fans who are not into metal, or extreme metal, if you will. We have all sorts of fans these days which I really, really like. I think if you are not open-minded, I don’t think you are going to be a fan of our music. If you only listen to Suffocation and Behemoth, then you probably won’t like Opeth that much. We have so much other stuff going on in our music. Personally, I listen to all kinds of music - everything from metal to jazz and prog. I think you’ll probably be able to appreciate our music a bit better if you are an open-minded listener. You can find stages of all kinds of music on our albums.
Mike: Your vocal chords must really take a beating on tour, Mikael. Going from screaming to harmonizing melodically must take its toll on you. Do you have any tricks for keeping your vocals fresh when you tour heavily?
Mikael: No, not really. It does take its toll though. I’ve been having some problems or something with my screaming lately. That might be because I’m not as super-interested in it as I once was when I was younger. With that said, we did a show just the other day at the Bonnaroo Festival and it was pretty rocking, I think. It’s sounded pretty cool playing our set there. So I don’t think I try anything to keep my voice in shape, really. I’m more wary about not being able to deliver the clean vocals. I don’t want to lose that. I want to be able to hit all of the smooth notes, and I don’t want to lose the ability to do that harmonizing. The screaming thing I have been doing for such a long time now, I don’t think I can take it much further. I don’t really enjoy it as much as I used to, but that’s just me right now.
Mike: Opeth will spend the summer doing mostly festivals, and you’ll be playing both Heavy TO and Heavy MTL in Canada in July. Will you be playing any new material at these shows?
Mikael: Well, we’re not going to be playing any new material during the summer festivals; basically again due to the fact that people are going to fucking film it with their iPhones and upload it somewhere. And if we play a new song like shit, or the sound is bad, or it’s really windy out that day, then footage will be out there that doesn’t represent the song well. We want to present our music in the best way possible – like it’s supposed to sound. If a YouTube clip of new songs from a festival winds up online and the footage and sound is shitty, I don’t want people to judge our material based on something like this. We were rehearsing to play ‘The Devil's Orchard’ this summer, actually. We just sort of stopped and thought about it a bit and decided it wasn’t a good idea. We are saving those songs until the fall when we go on tour with the album.
Mike: Both Toronto and Montreal are not on the Heritage tour dates, likely because you will have just played here a few months earlier at the two summer festivals. Hopefully you will return to headline this new album at a later date.
Mikael: I didn’t know that actually. Are we not playing there?
Mike: I didn’t see them on the posted dates.
Mikael: Right. That’s a bit strange though. I didn’t know that. We always come to Canada on our tours.
Mike: Oh, you are coming to Canada. It looks like you are coming right across the country from the west coast.
Mikael: That’s strange. But we are going to do two, possibly three big tours of North America so if we are not coming through Montreal and Toronto on that first tour, we sure as hell will be through on the second and third one.
Mike: Cool. It’s been good talking with you, Mikael. I’m looking forward to seeing you at Heavy TO.
Mikael: Cheers. Thanks very much
1. Heritage 02:05
2. The Devil's Orchard 06:40
3. I Feel The Dark 06:40
4. Slither 04:03
5. Nepenthe 05:40
6. Haxprocess 06:57
7. Famine 08:32
8. The Lines In My Hand 03:49
9. Folklore 08:19
10. Marrow Of The Earth 04:19
57:04
Mikael: How are you doing, Mike?
Mike: I’m doing good, man. How are you?
Mikael: We’re doing some press stuff in New York today; not much else.
Mike: How did your photo shoot go?
Mikael: Well, it was kind of regular. We tried to look cool. It went well.
Mike: How do you feel as a musician with over 20 years of involvement in one band? Are you ever surprised you’ve lasted for so long pursuing your passion with Opeth?
Mikael: Oh, I don’t know. Well, I guess it’s twenty years – twenty one years really. It’s a long time. If you’d asked me twenty years ago if Opeth would last this long, I would have said, “Not a chance”. You get sucked into this business. I guess it’s like any other kind of business in a lot of ways… and before you know it you’re in the middle of a career. That’s what happened to us, you know? We just continued making albums and touring. I made up my mind a long time ago that I wanted to be a musician and haven’t had the chance really to pursue anything else. It’s just been working and working at our music, and now here we are.
Mike: Do you feel your inspiration to write music still comes from the same place?
Mikael: Well, it’s still from music I listen to most of the time, I guess. I’m constantly playing music. Music is still as strong as ever. I’m still buying shit-loads of records all the time, trying to find new inspiration, but also I just to listen to music. Even if I wasn’t writing myself, I would still be a big consumer of music. My inspiration to write our material comes from other people’s music, and that has changed a little bit over the years. When I was fifteen I was listening to music like Merciful Fate or something like them to gather inspiration, where now I’m listing to music that is coming out right now. You can only buy Don't Break the Oath so many times, right?
(laughs)
Mike: Heritage will be your tenth album, and your third album on Roadrunner Records. Did you have anything different in mind that you really wanted to accomplish on this tenth album?
Mikael: I just wanted it to be different. I had a pretty strong urge to do it differently and not be stuck in a rut, so to speak. I’d like to think that every album we’ve done has been an album that reflects what we really wanted to do at the time. This time around, when I started writing, I was a bit disillusioned with what I wanted to do and what we should do as a band. I didn’t want us to get stuck with a sound. I get restless and when that happens it’s just time to move on and try something different, and that’s what we did with this album. We just wrote eleven or twelve songs that sounded like stuff that I would want to listen to now, rather than writing stuff that sounds like things we’ve already done before. We have always tried to do records that we want to hear. There’s no exception to that rule with Heritage, but it’s a different sounding album than our previous ones.
Mike: Can fans hear anything from the new album on your website yet?
Mikael: No, nothing.
Mike: If I’m reading my internet bits correctly, ‘The Devil's Orchard’ is set to be your first single, correct? Are you going to pop that online to give fans a taste of the new material?
Mikael: We don’t know yet. The album is coming in September sometime. I’m assuming there will be a preview around that time. If I could chose, we wouldn’t put anything out until the album release date. That’s one thing that we want to rebel against. Maybe me more than the others in Opeth, but I want to rebel against the whole internet based thing with music. Updates from the bands in the studio, twitter pictures of recording sessions, and pre-released singles all seem to be the norm on the internet. I don’t want our music to be first heard like that, you know? I’m a YouTube consumer too… but I don't want our stuff to get an advance release and sound bad. I understand the business model for music has changed, and that is just how it works these days, but I’m really not into the whole internet hype for new albums.
Mike: Would you do anything for your fans on your website - something exclusive for fans who pre-order Heritage? Limited artwork, or autographed versions?
Mikael: I’m not sure about that. That’s more up to the label. I don’t think in terms of promotion when it comes to music. For me, once the album is done, my work is pretty much done. I don’t think in terms of how to sell it once it’s done. There’s guys in bands that do that and they are entrepreneurs in a way, which is good for them. I’m just a rocking dude, you know? The work feels like it’s done once I have produced an album. Then we will go out on tour which is also my type of work, you know? Everything surrounding a release and promotion and interviews and bundles and packages for selling albums, that’s the record labels and management’s job. I’m kind of shooting my load all over the making of the record. I don't really have much else to offer after that.
Mike: After the Watershed tour, you did a half dozen special live shows, in which you played the entire Blackwater Park album live to celebrate your 20th anniversary. Fans flew in from all over the world to see those shows. How much preparation did you put into those performances as a band?
Mikael: It wasn’t too much preparation. Many of these songs we have been playing for a while already anyways. There were a few songs from Blackwater Park that we hadn’t played in a while. We were doing that album in entirety and we had to rehearse a few of those songs to get them into shape to play live. And some of the old stuff – the second part of the set at those shows was kind of a chronologic selection of our material and there were bits and pieces of material there that we’d never really played before. So we had to rehearse there a bit more. But all in all I don’t think we spent too much time preparing. We just perceived it as just another few gigs, but slightly longer and at exclusive venues.
Those shows were more for the fans, you know? We had meetings with fans before every show. I thought that was going to be weird. Don’t get me wrong, I like my fans, but when it’s staged like that, with signing sessions where somebody tells you to do something, I generally go into it thinking the whole thing might not work out well, mostly because I go in thinking that it’s not a natural occurrence. But it WAS nice. The people that we met at these shows, it was a pleasure to meet them and get the chance to talk to them, you know?
Mike: I can see how the meet and greets could feel mechanical for you guys. But at these shows, with fans flying in from around the world, I think you were getting a true representation of your die-hards.
Mikael: Yes, right. I just worried that because it’s something we had been told to do, that feeling might show through from us to our fans. That would be terrible. I was a bit worried about that, but it really worked out fine. The band really had a good time doing those things at those shows and we might continue doing that for fans down the road.
Mike: One of those celebratory shows was the Royal Albert Hall show in the UK, most recently released on DVD in two different formats. Are you happy with this footage? Do you feel it captures a live Opeth show accurately?
Mikael: Yes, it’s decent. I only watched it once when I edited the thing. I was there taking part in the editing of the footage before it was released. That’s the only time I’ve seen it. I’ve never really listened to it since we performed live at the show. I’m very happy with the sleeve for the DVD, with the whole gimmicky Deep Purple sort of thing. I was very happy with the way that turned out.
Mike: At what point during your discography do you feel Opeth really hit its stride, Mikael? Do you feel that this album is the one fans enjoy the most as well?
Mikael: I think we were pretty well prepared on our first album. We’d been around for a while before we recorded our first album. I think we were pretty much done by the time we did our first album. I can’t say that we’ve been working our way to up to certain albums or anything. I think at the time, when the first album came out, that is what we wanted to do. It was a collection of songs that we had been playing for a couple of years, and we did that album well. It’s not like we were learning much at the recording of that album. I think we were pretty much done establishing our sound at that point. But obviously, things happened in the late nineties and early in the new millennium with Blackwater Park. That album catapulted us into a different level, and all of a sudden we were a professional band on a global scale, touring more than we ever had. That’s when we became professional musicians, I guess. Musically, I don’t particularly think Blackwater Park is better than any of our other albums, you know? It just seemed to be more appealing to our audience, I guess.
Mike: Listening to any Opeth album is an interesting experience for the listener. Your music can be punishingly heavy and then switch to something very sensitive and technical, often within the same song. Do you find your audiences are primarily metal fans, or do you have a good representation of fans that enjoy your mellower side?
Mikael: We certainly do have fans who are not into metal, or extreme metal, if you will. We have all sorts of fans these days which I really, really like. I think if you are not open-minded, I don’t think you are going to be a fan of our music. If you only listen to Suffocation and Behemoth, then you probably won’t like Opeth that much. We have so much other stuff going on in our music. Personally, I listen to all kinds of music - everything from metal to jazz and prog. I think you’ll probably be able to appreciate our music a bit better if you are an open-minded listener. You can find stages of all kinds of music on our albums.
Mike: Your vocal chords must really take a beating on tour, Mikael. Going from screaming to harmonizing melodically must take its toll on you. Do you have any tricks for keeping your vocals fresh when you tour heavily?
Mikael: No, not really. It does take its toll though. I’ve been having some problems or something with my screaming lately. That might be because I’m not as super-interested in it as I once was when I was younger. With that said, we did a show just the other day at the Bonnaroo Festival and it was pretty rocking, I think. It’s sounded pretty cool playing our set there. So I don’t think I try anything to keep my voice in shape, really. I’m more wary about not being able to deliver the clean vocals. I don’t want to lose that. I want to be able to hit all of the smooth notes, and I don’t want to lose the ability to do that harmonizing. The screaming thing I have been doing for such a long time now, I don’t think I can take it much further. I don’t really enjoy it as much as I used to, but that’s just me right now.
Mike: Opeth will spend the summer doing mostly festivals, and you’ll be playing both Heavy TO and Heavy MTL in Canada in July. Will you be playing any new material at these shows?
Mikael: Well, we’re not going to be playing any new material during the summer festivals; basically again due to the fact that people are going to fucking film it with their iPhones and upload it somewhere. And if we play a new song like shit, or the sound is bad, or it’s really windy out that day, then footage will be out there that doesn’t represent the song well. We want to present our music in the best way possible – like it’s supposed to sound. If a YouTube clip of new songs from a festival winds up online and the footage and sound is shitty, I don’t want people to judge our material based on something like this. We were rehearsing to play ‘The Devil's Orchard’ this summer, actually. We just sort of stopped and thought about it a bit and decided it wasn’t a good idea. We are saving those songs until the fall when we go on tour with the album.
Mike: Both Toronto and Montreal are not on the Heritage tour dates, likely because you will have just played here a few months earlier at the two summer festivals. Hopefully you will return to headline this new album at a later date.
Mikael: I didn’t know that actually. Are we not playing there?
Mike: I didn’t see them on the posted dates.
Mikael: Right. That’s a bit strange though. I didn’t know that. We always come to Canada on our tours.
Mike: Oh, you are coming to Canada. It looks like you are coming right across the country from the west coast.
Mikael: That’s strange. But we are going to do two, possibly three big tours of North America so if we are not coming through Montreal and Toronto on that first tour, we sure as hell will be through on the second and third one.
Mike: Cool. It’s been good talking with you, Mikael. I’m looking forward to seeing you at Heavy TO.
Mikael: Cheers. Thanks very much
FerretallicA
HMAS Slagdestroyer
Take note Pain of Salvation: proof that reinventing your sound doesn't necessitate sounding like total shit.
Sounds kind of like something I'd expect from OSI...
Last edited by a moderator:
salty
Member
FerretallicA
HMAS Slagdestroyer
The whole album is streaming here:
http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=140288664&m=140262406
And the related article:
http://www.npr.org/2011/09/11/140288664/first-listen-opeth-heritage
http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=140288664&m=140262406
And the related article:
http://www.npr.org/2011/09/11/140288664/first-listen-opeth-heritage
Shadow298
UNLEASH THE GUAN
A mate lent me his promo copy and fucking loved it!
Some amazing tracks on the album, especially Famine & Folklore.
Some amazing tracks on the album, especially Famine & Folklore.
Goreripper
Metal as fuck
"Famine" is awesome. I thought the Cuban jazz stuff at the start was a bit too much, but then... fuck! What a track.
Wow this is different.
It is growing on me..
Slither sounds like a Deep Purple track from the 70's.... Something like Bloodsucker off the In Rock album..
It is growing on me..
Slither sounds like a Deep Purple track from the 70's.... Something like Bloodsucker off the In Rock album..
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