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  • 2 days ago
Opeth mainman Mikael Åkerfeldt dissects the prog metal legends' discography to pick out the five songs that have defined their career so far.

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00:00and he was like this song is too good for you to fuck it up with things like that and
00:05i'm like
00:11hi i'm michael from opeth and you're watching metal hammer i remember one of my like if i'm
00:15gonna go way back early 90s when we were still kind of maybe we had found our sound so to
00:23speak
00:23which at the time was melodic and the twin guitar playing harmonies that type of thing
00:31and we had a couple of songs that i liked but then we wrote this particular song that ended up
00:36on
00:36the first record orchid a song called the apostle in triumph i just like that word for some reason
00:45and that song uh like once that song was finished and i felt like okay we we have an album
00:53you know uh it set the tone for that record i think and made the the older songs better somehow
01:01as well so this would be like 92 90 91 92 we did that song and it ended up on
01:08the first record
01:09which also kind of uh helped with the writing of the next dub because those two first records
01:17quite similar in compositions we haven't played that song live that much we didn't in the beginning
01:23but i was constantly looking at it you know when whenever we have a new tour
01:28if we're going to play something obscure because nobody likes that song um i always figured that
01:34could be the one it has like one of them uh echo guitar you know like a pink floyd you
01:41know pretty
01:42pretty cool so that once that was finished i was like we're something we got something you know so that
01:49meant a lot to uh to me and to to the the the the early career if you can call
01:55it a career in those
01:56days we didn't have one but uh it was like a i'm not defining moment for me at least once
02:02that song
02:03was finished 30 years of orchid uh celebrations uh no i mean what that wouldn't probably mean that we
02:11should play the whole record i hate doing those things we've done that a couple of times before it's
02:16it's it's it's not it's not a good idea i think you know i think some fans might like that
02:21idea but as
02:22a band it's i don't think it works to be honest not interesting and i'm not interested you know it's
02:28it's just uh tedious i think but i do i'm happy with that record it's very naive it's kind of
02:35uh it hasn't aged well um but it's still our debut so i love it you know it's like uh
02:43i can hear my
02:4619 or 17 18 19 year old mind when i listen to those songs how i was thinking and there's
02:54not a lot of
02:55those kind of uh passages musical passages that would that i would feel i would write today so to
03:01speak but every now and then and maybe for that song possibly in triumph there's a couple of things
03:06that's like yeah it's not that bad whatever demon of the fall we played it to death
03:12for a while like it was uh our paranoid i guess we figured we had a hit really like it's
03:19on the third
03:20record my arms your hearse it was written in a crummy hostel in guthenburg we recorded the record
03:29there and we didn't have all the songs finished and me and peter sat down in this hostel and some
03:34drunk
03:34guy on it like it was like bunk beds and some drunk guy sat there and we were playing in
03:41the hostel and
03:42put together that song i think it's also the first song that we used to drop d so get a
03:48heavier kind of
03:49guitar tone but it felt once that was finished uh because of the chorus demon demon of the fall
03:56like yeah it's a death metal hit and it kind of in a very very very very small scale became
04:03a little
04:04bit of a hit song for us and when we when we play it now it's you can you know
04:09the the reaction from
04:11the crowd is guaranteed to be to be positive it's it's also a good song i think it still has
04:17stuff that i can relate to um it's a bit patchy but not shit we started playing it to death
04:25because
04:25we thought it was going to be a a hit uh or thought that it was i mean we're a
04:31death metal band we don't
04:32like there's not going to be any hits on the horizon but in in our little world uh but possibly
04:37yeah since
04:38we played it so much people have heard it live but it was from the get-go when that record
04:42came out it was
04:43popular that song it was something that stood out that mid like breakdown or whatever you call it
04:49you know with a 12 string guitar but it's uh that recording was chaotic and it was the first record
04:55for martin lopez and we had never really recorded what did one horrible iron maiden cover with him
05:02and he was great like death metal drummer he has shit the singing is shit the playing is
05:09shit the only cool thing about that song that our maiden cover is that we recorded it with
05:15the singer from not nasum nasum the grindcore band and he passed away in tsunami in thailand
05:22he was killed and this was right before so that's my memory about the maiden song for that reason i
05:28don't
05:29want it undone so to speak but uh it's not very good deliverance in our world the classic we play
05:36it
05:36almost every night i got a text actually from our management uh saying that if we would play that rock
05:44from now uh to all the shows up to sweden rock festival that we're doing in the summer if we
05:51played
05:51at every show up to sweden rock it will be a thousand time we had played it live and it
05:57was
05:57like something like 9.8 days without break you know playing that song so we played it a lot but
06:03that's uh
06:04i mean you just lean back when we play it it's it's a lovely it's a cool song you know
06:09uh on otherwise
06:13not great record uh parts of that record is very very patchy to me uh but that song is great
06:20and we
06:21play it every night i knew it was going to happen it became the title track the ending section which
06:27was you know shocker called the meshuggah bit for us because they had put out their record destroy erase
06:35improve which i listened to a lot and it was unique and i was like that's cool with it you
06:41know a lot of
06:42it was in four four but they made it complicated so we tried doing that so you know deliverance is
06:48also
06:48four four four but sounds like some odd time signature so yeah i mean that's uh that's worth
06:55mentioning you know it probably doesn't come to us any surprise with people watching this that
07:00i would mention that song but it's great that's when we were our so to speak career took off
07:09so that deserves a mention faith in others the only song i'm genuinely proud of
07:18that i've written that song is perfect that's one of those songs where you take something out and
07:24you've seen the film mozart when it's like you the salieri saying something like you take one note
07:30you change one note and it it falls you know that's how it feels with that song it's a very
07:35emotional
07:36song and it just came out exactly how i wanted it to to be and i also had a little
07:42bit of a fight with
07:43steven wilson who mixed the record because i wanted some type of just a tiny effect on the vocal that
07:51made it sound a bit kind of boxy and he didn't want that effect and he was like this song
07:59is too
08:00good for you to it up with things like that and i'm like oh that's a compliment he even said
08:05like i'm
08:06jealous that you wrote that song and not me and i was like that was a big compliment from like
08:13even
08:13if we're buddies he's still my mentor and idol in many ways so to have that from him but of
08:18course
08:18nobody cared for that song i think you know uh but that's one of my proud moments
08:27the proud moment i mean there's many songs that i like but very few songs that i find perfect the
08:33vocal delivery was really good the lyrics were good uh we got the strings on there it's very very
08:40sentimental and uh but i think it's a beautiful song those records i mean those whatever called like
08:45when we were people in the derogatory term would say like we were or michael is on a a jazz
08:52odyssey
08:53with those four records but yeah it's it's a pretty underrated record an underrated song
08:59you know we have overrated songs too i think but um that's underrated i need to ask you to name
09:06an overrated okay um yeah blackwater park the title track it's great it's a great song that people
09:16absolutely love and i'm gonna we played it we played every now and then and i'm like
09:22this riff is not good there's a couple of good riffs there but uh another is bleak when i listened
09:27to
09:28that song and we were gonna play it on this tour and i decided against it because the ending i
09:33can
09:33literally hear myself just rushing it together it doesn't feel like it's my song and it's it's the
09:39the fans own yeah they own that song now and besides like i wouldn't go back and you know change
09:46everything i want it exactly as as is but uh i can hear the flaws and the songwriting there so
09:54to speak
09:55paragraph two right now i think that that's a it's a really interesting uh album to me
10:02my favorite song on there at the moment is paragraph two uh much because of the fact that
10:11ian is talking and ian anderson is talking a lot on that song joey tempest is singing on that song
10:18uh it just has it's a bit crazy you know it feels like the sound in my head that song
10:25you know i don't
10:27like run of the mill i don't like streamline i want it to be a challenge to listen to i
10:34want people to
10:35go like this is garbage and i want it like okay yeah whatever but to me it's it's a thing
10:41you know that
10:42i don't like that song and i completely understand why it could be hard to listen to those kind of
10:47things but
10:48that's where i'm at right now i i hate when i can predict the next move in a song especially
10:58in the
10:58metal scene it feels like i can predict what they're gonna do with this band i think fans and myself
11:08and my band members
11:09uh bandmates uh you have to let everything run its course you know if i if i am like determined
11:18to do
11:18something it's no point trying to push me you know the only thing that's gonna happen is i get upset
11:25like a child and i was like okay then we won't do anything then you know i have to because
11:32that's the
11:32idea with this band since the beginning we do what we want to do even since the first record and
11:37that
11:37was odd for the time and for for the other metal bands around the time it was an odd record
11:43already
11:44then so um and for me the same like if i'm gonna change it has to come from within and
11:52that's kind of
11:53what happened with that new album that i i thought that in cauda okay when that was done okay this
12:01part in our history is done i couldn't better that record i thought it was great and i don't want
12:09to
12:10double more anymore in that type of sound it's a time for a change so i tried out with the
12:16screens
12:16and we've been talking a little bit about it over the years with the new album like just kind of
12:21baby
12:22step see if i sounded good if it worked with the new music and it did i thought it sounded
12:27awesome
12:28the the first idea was to do a proper death metal level like
12:34yeah all the way through uh that didn't happen now i'm i'm happy with the change i didn't feel
12:41pushed to do it i i wanted to try it out myself and i guess it worked
12:52so
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