Sweden’s Opeth enjoys keeping its fans in their toes. Rarely do we get the same experience twice with successive albums from the band, however, the release of its latest album, HERITAGE, Opeth shook the foundations of its own fan base.
Having recently completed a North American tour in support of the album, we managed to nab a few moments of time with drummer Martin Axenrot to get his impression of the 2011 evolution of Opeth!
What is your opinion of the polarized reception that HERITAGE has received since its release?
Everyone has the right to their own opinions and tastes. I would rather have everyone have some opinion rather than not caring at all. I think it really has challenged a lot of people’s view of music. I think it would have been very strange if we did WATERSHED PART II. I had hoped that the fans would have automatically expected something a little different.
Yeah, that’s what I wanted to mention; Opeth has a decent history of evolving album-to-album and trying different things, so I don’t really understand why people are so severely bent out of shape over HERITAGE.
Mikael told me that this also happened when DAMNATION came out. It is now one of the most respected Opeth albums, but when it came out, a lot of people hated it. It’s difficult to release an album and please everyone with it; the most we can do is what we think is best for us, and hopefully someone else will like it, also.
But even on the tour dates, people were polarized. There were posts from “fans” on Opeth’s Facebook page saying, “Don’t bother going, they don’t play death metal!”
[Laughs] Well, I guess that all depends on what you consider “death metal.” For me, death metal was something I started playing, because I wanted to do something to distinguish myself from every other band.
But now, if you look, death metal records all seem to have the same recording sound and mixing, and even though a lot of the bands sound the same, there is some kind of weird competition. So, I actually think it is more “death metal” to record an album that no one would expect to hear.
Do you make a point to challenge yourself with each Opeth release?
I think it is important for me to play my instrument to the best way I can for each song. It is all in how I approach each song. If it is more death-y sounding, then I will think about it in that way, but if it is more airy and experimental, then I will look at it from another angle. It depends totally on the song. It is good to have familiarity with a wide spectrum of sounds to approach the different styles we play.
Did you work directly with Alex Acuña on his part in “Famine,” or did he come in and do that on his own?
My drum tech knew him and knew that he was in town the same time that we were in the studio. He called him and asked if he’d be up for putting down some percussion on the album. And he came down, listened to the song once or twice, went into the studio and ripped it out in one take. It was really quick.
Is Opeth still Mikael’s vision, or has it evolved into collaboration?
He creates all the demos at home, and then he distributes them to us to work out in the rehearsal space. Then we go into the studio and discuss the songs and play them over and over again until they work themselves out.
This time around, we had everything ready to go from the beginning. However, we did record 20 takes of the second song just to get the sound right. We really do a lot of work with specific sounds. But the rest of it was a natural process. We played most of the songs from front to back live in the studio.
Grab a copy of HERITAGE, available now at Amazon and Amazon Digital.
And keep up with Opeth at Facebook, Twitter, and its official website.
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