The name 'Blackwater Park' was taken from an obscure psychedelic rock band. What meaning does the name have for Opeth?
Well really - we stole the title from this band basically because I liked it. I figured it could be a good title for an Opeth album. It sounds like a classic kind of title, you know what I mean? So I basically stole it from them. The music for this album came out very, very dark and the lyrics as well. I just felt that Blackwater Park sounded like a classic dark kind of title that would go along with the music and the lyrics.
[Steven Wilson] sang on "Bleak"?
Yes. He played the guitar solo on the same track as well.
'My Arms, Your Hearse' is quite the bizarre name for an album. What exactly does that mean?
A lot of people asked me that when the album came out. I took it. I steal all the album titles from other bands. 'My Arms, Your Hearse' was taken from this band called Comus. They released two albums, I think, and this is taken from their first album called 'First Utterance'. It's taken from a lyric line of theirs and the entire lyric line is: "As I carry you to your grave, my arms, your hearse." That pretty much explains everything.
What other albums of yours were concept albums? Were they all?
Not all of them. 'My Arms, Your Hearse' and the album after that, 'Still Life'. The first two were just individual stories if you will - pretty much rambling on about stuff I didn't understand myself.
Would you summarize the basic concepts for each one?
For 'My Arms, Your Hearse' it was like a ghost story. The basic theme was that this person dies. He's kind of reborn as a ghost, and he stays in the same environment. He sees his loved ones, like family members and friends, going on with their lives. It's almost like a film - what's it called? The Sixth Sense - he doesn't understand that he is dead - but I wrote it actually before the Sixth Sense came out. It's almost like a film. 'Still Life' was not Satanic but an anti-Christian theme. It sounds pretty naive when I explain it like this. It kind of takes place a long time ago when Christianity had a bigger importance than it has today. The main character is kind of banished from his hometown because he hasn't got the same faith as the rest of the inhabitants there. The album pretty much starts off when he is returning after several years to hook up with his old "babe." Obviously a lot of bad things start happening with, as I call it on the album, "the council." The big bosses of the town know that he's back. A lot of bad things start happening. They see him as a hypocrite in a way. It's almost like a devil's advocate or whatever it's called.
What is the picture on the 'Morningrise' cover?
We did not know at the time. Our label boss for Candlelight went on holiday, and they went to this place. I can't remember the name. He actually walked on the bridge or whatever it is. He sent me a postcard with the exact same picture that we have on the cover there but with color. It's some kind of tourist place in England.
