SOCIAL MEDIA

Opeth

TM - Hi, this is Amelia and Elizabeth from Twinmusix and we are here with Fredrick from Opeth, thank you for having this interview with us today we appreciate it.

FK - Thank you.

TM - What can fans expect from your Australian tour?

FK - We are going to start preparing for our European tour that starts in February. We have a lot of tours before we come to Australia and we are going to morph the setlist and we are going to play stuff from our new album "The Last Will and Testament". We are looking at rehearsing five songs and hopefully, we will play four of them. We always try to cover as much as possible but it is difficult when we have 14 albums to choose from. We try to play longer sets but we also look into what we played last time and we try to alternate the songs from the last time. We have our few "Smoke on the Waters" that we always play and there are certain tracks that it is difficult to not play but it is going to be good.

TM - Do you have a favourite song to play live?

FK - The new stuff, we recently did a North American tour and did three weeks and we played the songs of our new album "paragraph 1 and paragraph 3", both of those tracks are fun to play. From the earliest stuff we played "Black Rose Immortal" from the album "Orchid" which is tricky to play because it is twenty-one minutes long and there is about six different riffs in it, that was fun to dig that one out but we can't play it much because it eats up a bunch of our setlist. We played it on our anniversary tour and I enjoyed playing that track, it wasn't difficult to play but it was tricky to remember the parts.

TM - How did fans respond to your new album "The Last Will and Testament"?

FK - We did a release party in Stockholm and I met some people and some friends and they seemed to be blown away. It makes us happy and the reviews and comments have been great. We all agreed that this album was something else and I just found out today we got voted Album of the Year in Sweden Rock Magazine.

TM - Congratulations.

FK - Thank you very much.

TM - What was your writing and recording process for your new album "The Last Will and Testament"?

FK - Mikael writes the majority of the music and he makes the demos. We started with "Paragraph 7" and he sent me the part where he wanted me to create a solo and I worked on that and we just bounced back and forth.

Our new drummer Waltteri Väyrynen sits with a track with and without the drums so he can rehearse all the songs and everyone else does the same thing. Then me and Waltteri rehearsed about 20 times before we met up in the rehearsal room. We rehearsed as an entire band because I needed to get all the parts into my muscle memory. Then me and Mikael do the album in the studio.

We start off with the drums and Waltteri is playing along to the demo without the drums so he can hear everything. Then he plays along with the idea of these song and then we go to the rhythm guitars and then we do bass guitar. The reason we do that is because it is easier to tune the bass after the two guitars and then it just continues on. After that, you mix it and that's when everyone has different ideas and you have to have a conclusion to have it all together.

TM - Who designed your album cover and is there a meaning behind it?

FK - Travis Smith has been working with us since the "Still Life" album. The concept of the album is to have all these people on the cover with all these faces and if you look at that picture closely you will find everyone in the band on the cover and also our manager Andy. He is wearing a ladies hat and on the previous album, we had a house with a fountain and a pissing boy and Andy's face was on the pissing boy. We try to be a bit funny with it and he loves it and he is good about it.

TM - If you could have any band play one of your songs what band would it be, what song would it be and would it be in your style or their style?

FK - Black Sabbath doing "Demon of the Fall" in their interpretation.

TM - Who was the first band you saw live and can you tell us a story?

FK - KISS, I think, I was 12 or 13 years old and I went with my friend. We were standing on the stools on the balcony and this bigger guy knocked me down and he said you are in my way and I got super scared and being a little kid it was a very traumatic first concert experience. That was from the album "Animalize" where they didn't have the makeup. Other than that, the early shows of Accept, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and Dio.

TM - Did they influence you to play music?

FK - Absolutely, at a very early age I knew what I wanted to do. When I was thirteen I was like I wanted to play the guitar and I saw Michael Schenker play on TV and that's spellbound me. I was like can you do that with a guitar and I started practicing and I put a lot of time into it.

TM - What is your favourite show you have been to?

FK - Pluse tour with Pink Floyd in the 90's, I saw that in Oslo Norway and that was an amazing show.

Iron Maiden's Somewhere Back in Time World Tour. They have these figures blowing up and Bruce Dickinson was standing in these hands and it was really cool.

Judas Priest tour that Rob Halford was sitting in a robot hand doing "Electric Eye". It is stuff I will never forget and luckily enough we are going to be playing some festivals in April in South America and we are going to do a lot of shows with Judas Priest. We are looking forward to that.

TM - Is there anything else you want to say to your fans?

FK - I hope you have a great holiday coming up and you enjoy our new album "The Last Will and Testament". It is always awesome coming there to play and we are grateful for the support and we hope to see you at the shows.

TM - Thank you for having this interview with us today we appreciate it.

FK - Thank you.