OPETH Frontman: 'All Our Records Have Been Somewhat Of A Journey'

ARTISTdirect editor Rick Florino recently conducted an interview with OPETH vocalist/guitarist Mikael kerfeldt. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow.

ARTISTdirect: You're conjuring a lot of different imagery on this album ["Watershed"]. Did your writing process differ at all?

Mikael: A little bit, but it was more from a technical aspect, because I bought a computer with a ProTools rig. This way, I could record all of the songs and sequence them in the order that I wanted for the record. I went for long walks after working everyday and listening to the stuff. Then, I'd change the songs and re-arrange them. That was different. In the past, we did a string of records where I didn't have any of the songs. I just wrote everything in the studio. That was nice and all, but I think quality-wise, the material is better for me, doing it this way. For lyrics, I had a clear idea of what I wanted to write about, and I actually wanted to write lyrics this time around. I wrote them really fast. I wrote them all during one night in the studio. So writing this album was a pretty swift process. It was easy. It's been a struggle with all of the other records, and most of the recordings sessions have been horrible in the past, but this one was fun. We're definitely onto something with this one.

ARTISTdirect: What was that one night like were you wrote all of the lyrics? Were you particularly inspired?

Mikael: Yeah, I was, but I knew what I wanted to write about, and it was just a matter of bringing it out. So I just said to the guys, "You guys can go to bed, and I'm just going to stay up and write some lyrics." The next morning I had six of the songs done, pretty much. The "Coil" song was already there from the demo. So, yeah, I was pretty much done with everything in one night. It was pretty easy. The death metal vocals are easy for me to get into the songs rhythmically. I can always find the rhythm to fit whatever lyrics I come up with. The clean vocals I did on the demos, so I already had the rhythms and vocal lines. It was just a matter of fitting in the right words there. It was just easier this time around. All our records have been somewhat of a journey, in a way. "Ghost Reveries" and this one were done with more pre-production and rehearsal. We were able to change things. We were more certain about things than we've been in the past. When we did the double album, we didn't have a clue from the studio. Once the albums were finished, we didn't really know what was on there. Once we'd been rehearsing for a few weeks and the songs were finished, we knew we had a good album.

ARTISTdirect: The '70s vibe of the artwork is reminiscent of "The Exorcist" a little bit.

Mikael: [Laughs] That's cool. That wasn't really the inspiration. I told our artist Travis that I wanted a picture of complete isolation, and I wanted it to be very dark, as it always is, in a way. It's a lot more subtle, this time around. There are lot of hidden meanings and messages in there that we never really had before. It was a pleasure doing the artwork this time around, but I guess I was more picky. Travis sent out shitloads of ideas. I was really picky with some of those images. I didn't really take an inspiration from "The Exorcist", but that's cool. That washed out '70s vibe was what we wanted. If you had the cover picture without the OPETH logo on there, most people would probably see that it's an OPETH album anyways. It goes along with our past artwork as well in a way.

Read the entire interview at ARTISTdirect.