While this may be nothing new for some of you, I found an audio interview with Mikeal so I've written it up for anyone interested. Its about the new album.
(I) Interviewer
(MA) Mikeal Akerfeldt
I: But um, are you writing new material now already?
MA: No I havent started because we've been on tour for, I dunno how long so
I havent had any time to write any new music. But I've got plans for what it should be like.
I: Yeah, so what should it be like? More direction with 60's, 70's influences?
MA: No I think its going to be... I'm thinking about doing some sort of occult theme, concept wise and have maybe 3 different songs on the album, you know each song is two parts, so each song is actualy 2 songs, but they're connected together. 3 realy long songs, like 20 minute songs or something.
I: Sounds a little bit like Tool
MA: Yeah yeah, well obviously with Tool as an influence. But it was just, you know I wanted some kind of... when I'm going to start writing for something new I want to have some kind of idea... not only write, you know, see what it ends up, I wanna have some idea, like the 2 album thing. I was excited about writing them and now I'm excited about writing this, whatever its gunna be but im thinking about doing something extremely heavy and beautiful at the same time. And maybe we'll take some influences off the Damnation album like melotromes (is that right?) and the use of vintage keyboards maybe, and see what we like. But under those terms I'm gunna try and write music for the next stuff.
I: Are you interested in the occult things?
MA: Yeah I'm pretty interested but I'm not a satanist or anything its just a...
I: It was full moon a couple days ago...
MA: Yeah I saw that. But you know when I grew up, when I got into death metal O was hugely into that stuff, and I was thinking about doing a bit of research for the lyrics and just to come up with some sorta story around that subject... I'm not saying its gunna some kinda... antichrist or something like that, just something that deals with the occult in some way, I dont know exactly what its gunna be like, but I was like, hmm, yeah, I wanna do something slightly satanic.