First And Foremost

"I've seen it all, man, I've seen it all,” Mikael Åkerfeldt, frontman of Swedish progressive metallers Opeth, recalls. “It feels like, what are we? You take away the screams and we're nothing to some people. Which makes me question, why do they like us at all? Do they just kind of go out to have a fucking beer during ballads? There's so many other bands out there who deliver the screams in every song; just go watch them instead. Opeth is not one of those bands. We try to do a little bit of everything. Heritage was our last record, we want to promote it. You don't like it, that's fine, but don't be a cunt.”

Heritage, released in 2011 and Opeth's tenth full-length (or “observation”), polarised a fanbase accustomed to a bridging of progressive music and classic death metal. Strongly rooted in psychedelic-drenched '70s prog-rock, its ambient, otherworldly sounds flirted with jazz, folk and classic rock. Little could really be considered “metal”. The aforementioned comments are in response to a discussion about their previous Australian visit following the record's release, during which they only performed songs featuring clean vocals. Certain attendees subsequently cried out for “fucking death metal” or growled during the shows' more serene moments.

It was, frankly, disappointing to witness, especially when said performances were still wildly dynamic and crushingly heavy. When venturing outside afterwards, several punters loudly proclaimed how this equated to a betrayal. Obviously the bipolar vocal approach is an Opeth hallmark, but as this scribe suggests, surely the majority of fans could be open-minded enough to at least give such an approach a fair shake, especially live.

Åkerfeldt's seemingly not bothered much by such reactions – except when they are blatantly untrue. “I think it's unfair to say it's not Opeth, it's just that they don't like it,” he says, of particularly venomous feedback. “That's fine, I don't expect everyone to like everything that we do. But to say it's not Opeth, it's not right. It's wrong, because it is Opeth,” he laughs. “If it says Opeth on the record and a song is on there, then it's Opeth.

“I care about the fans, but if they don't like something, it's not like, 'Guys, we have to go back to the working desk now and see what we did wrong'. We stand behind every one of our records, 200%. Our fans, we love them, but it's not like if a portion of the fans don't like what we do, it won't change what we do. It won't have us custom write a record in order to please someone. All our records, even the popular ones that everybody likes, are based on what we like. So that's our recipe for whatever success we've had, we're just doing what we want to hear, basically. Heritage is no exception.”

These comments remind this scribe of a conversation with Porcupine Tree's Steven Wilson, a long-time friend/collaborator of Åkerfeldt's. He remarked that when musicians seek to sate others at the expense of pleasing themselves, they've crossed that line from artist to entertainer. The Opeth mainstay can get on board with this line of thinking. “People are going to have their opinions, it doesn't matter what we do. If we would have tried to repeat a previous record, I'm not sure that would have worked either. I don't like to see ourselves as a product. I don't like to see ourselves catering to anyone's needs other than our own.

“When we put out a record like Heritage or [2003's] Damnation, even [2008's] Watershed – which I thought was the ultimate kind of extreme Opeth record – I didn't feel like we could do anything better than that and [2005's] Ghost Reveries, too. But those records were also hated by some fans, who thought they were shit, which is fine. There are people out there who don't think that One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest is a very good film. Some people think that Dumb & Dumber is a masterpiece. People have different tastes and there's nothing you can do about that. It's impossible to cater to someone when it comes to expressing an art form.”

Was some of the live audiences' behaviour frustrating though? “I've got a thick skin,” he says. “Sometimes I get affected and sometimes I'm not like the most confident person in the world. Obviously, I want people to like me, to like us. But we've done close to 200 shows for the Heritage record, and I've had people, like, challenge me to duel. I remember there was a guy, wherever it was in America... He was like, 'Mike, I challenge you to duel'. I'm like, 'Okay, draw, bitch',” he deadpans, using that trademark dry sense of humour. “But it seems to be provocative to some people that we did Heritage and that we were consistent in trying to promote that record.

“I remember the Sydney show and there was some people yelling out things, which doesn't make me happy, but there was a bigger percentage of the crowd that seemed to like the show. It's not a change in that sense, that all of a sudden we're turning our backs on what we've done. The next time we come to Australia we're going to do some of the heavier stuff. It was just in those initial stages when the album was new; obviously, we wanted to promote it. We played a lot of new stuff and played old songs which fit together with those new songs.

“But people seem to be provoked by the fact that I didn't scream. Which I think is a bit silly. Some people, it's almost like we're challenging them by delivering our music in a different way than they expected or wanted. Then it's like we're cheating them… There's nothing I can do about it, we're still going to do what we want and I never want this band to be in a situation where we don't have control of what we do, and that we're just playing for someone else. We're always gonna try and make ourselves happy first and foremost, and it's just a nice side effect that some people like what we do.”

Many Australian devotees will be relieved to hear that. Taking a break from writing the next Opeth record (“One song is a strong, kind of melodic, sad song, the other one is a crazy, schizophrenic Queen metal song,” the frontman reveals of the progress) they'll return with fellow Swedes Katatonia in tow.

“Heritage is not new anymore. Now it's just another album in our discography and we've been touring for such a long time for it. Now it's settled in and we're doing more songs from the back catalogue and doing some of the screaming songs. It was never the idea that we were never going to play those songs again; it was just promoting a new album, which is a bit different. But yeah, there's gonna be screams,” he laughs.

Opeth will be eplaying the following dates:

Tuesday 12 March - HQ, Adelaide SA
Thursday 14 March - The Palace, Melbourne VIC
Friday 15 March - Enmore Theatre, Sydney NSW
Saturday 16 March - The Tivoli, Brisbane QLD