Opeth have been around for a long long time, yet they continue to release groundbreaking albums that push musical boundaries, while maintaining a massive fan base. They have released eleven albums, if you include their most recent addition Pure Communion, and they will be touching down next month to share it with us. Opeth's guitarist Fredrik dropped a line from his home in Stockholm to discuss what is what like to record in the inspiring Rochfield Studios in Wales, his journey with the band and what we can expect from the upcoming tour.
So you've been with the band since 2007, what's the journey been like over the last 8 years for yourself?
It's been quite amazing. I was a fan of the band before I joined. We were friends beforehand and still are friends believe it or not after 8 years of touring together. It's been a fun road. It's creative, always fun and you never know what will happen.
By joining the band, how has this developed your own skills as a musician?
Lots of the acoustic type of thing, I knew a bit of that before but I had to put a lot more time into that aspect of guitar playing when I joined the band and that's really fun to play. And also the sound is quite diverse from extreme metal to progressive rock stuff basically so its always challenging and that's when you can develop as a musician. It's fun to come up with solos on top of Mikael's rhythm sequences. I'm anxious to start working on our new album but we still have some touring to do and I think we can still come up with stuff thats interesting for the future.
There's quite a few great solos on your most recent album Pure Communion, did you come up with them or are they Mikael's?
Yeah, I came up with them. I think I play the solos on the first three songs and then on the sixth song which is a little heavier. We do a trade off kind of thing which was fun to bring back on this album, because we didn't have that on Heritage. It's important to me as a guitarist, I spend a lot of time thinking about solos.
Where was your new record Pure Communion recorded?
In Rockfield Studio in Wales. It's a classic studio built in the 60's and “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen was recorded there, and a couple of Rush albums such as Hemisphere and A Farewell to Kings. The place has a lot of legendary people on the walls, Judas Priest recorded Sin after Sin there. You know a lot of favourite albums were recorded there.
It must have been a very inspiring place to work.
Yeah absolutely, it was also a residential studio so for us it was really sufficient because we lived there basically, it's like a farm in the countryside so it was pretty cool to wake up in the morning and see horses and sheep outside the windows. It made recording very focused because we could work fourteen hours a day, we had our meals catered for us and it was an old school way to record. I liked it a lot. It was really nice, I wouldn't mind going back there to Rochfield. Black Sabbath rehearsed in the same room as we recorded, that was like wow.
And how long did it take you?
We got everything down in thirteen days so it was a very quick one but then we did a couple of days with the hammond organ in Stockholm, so all the hammond organ was recorded in Atlantis Studios which is where we recorded Heritage.
On the last two albums, theres been a bigger jazz influence in the songs. Was that a conscious decision or was it naturally progression?
After Watershed, Mikael had taken the metal thing to its peak or well that's how Mikael felt at least and he wanted to do something slightly different. I mean a lot of those riffs could be death metal riffs if they were played in a different format so you don't experience them like that. To put growls on top of that just to have it, would of made it a gimmick. I think these last two albums are linked in together, like Ghost Reveries and Watershed were. With the next album we don't really know what will happen.
So on the back of your last album Heritage, you had some pushback from some of your fans, did that impact you as a band?
For me personally it took me a while to get used to the style of Heritage, having no growls and stuff and I am proud of that album and I think it might of it taken some people some time to digest that but then they see us live and we're still metal heads, we still love that era and enjoy playing the heavy stuff and we do a lot live but maybe some people got confused because on the first tour we did, we did plenty of songs with growls but that was just of that tour to do something different. We now play about 60% of that stuff now live. But I can absolutely understand that but then again we have done that again with Damnation and Deliverance. So if you look it at that way.
By exploring many different styles, I imagine it's a way of broadening your fan base
Yeah absolutely, a lot of new fans love this album and some old ones have gotten pissed off. It seems the old school fans like that growl, but I think the main goal for us when we are in the studio and when we are feeling comfortable with it thats it. You can't do much more than put it out and hope people will like it.
What are you looking forward to with your upcoming tour in Australia?
We always enjoy coming down to Australia. The shows are always amazing, it's always nice to have a day off and go to the beaches. We will be spending three weeks in Australia and will be visiting the beaches.
So when you are choosing set lists with such a massive backlog, how do you go about selecting your set list and what can we expect on this tour?
So first of all we want to promote the latest album so we will play a few songs from the new album, and we try to pick one song from each album to play. This set will be a long one which is what we need because some of the old songs are so long, however we've managed to pick a song from every album. A lot of old school fans will appreciate this set list. We aways want to change it up, next time we will do something different. This time we are playing more of the old songs we haven't played for a long long time. I have never played “April Etherial” in Australia before. Its fun to play the old stuff and it goes along well with the new songs live and it takes the listener on an interesting journey.
Do you write as a band on the road or do you do all your writing back?
I sit down and play the guitar a lot on the road because you have so many hours to kill. I record a lot of small little riffs but Mikael writes the majority of stuff at home in Stockholm. It's really hard to focus on the road.
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Pure Communion is available now. They Opeth Australian tour dates are:
Sunday May 3 Sydney – Enmore Theatre
Monday May 4 Adelaide -The Gov
Wednesday May 6 Brisbane – Eatons Hill
Thursday May 7 Melbourne – The Forum
Friday May 8 Perth – The Astor
Tickets on sale now:
http://metropolistouring.com/tour.php?tour=2015_opeth