Mikael Ã…kerfeldt – Opeth

You play the most gigs in the US. What do you think of the contemporary music scene there?

The music scene in the US is very strong and it’s a very important market for us, when it comes to selling records. It’s important for us economically, I guess. We love playing there, we have a great fan base there, which is why everyone wants us to play there all the time; there is a big demand for us. But the music scene there right now, I won’t say I’m a big fan of the metal scene. I don’t like – I don’t know what you call it but we do it too – I mean with screams and clean vocals but it seems so ”˜poppy’ and everybody has such nice haircuts and it’s like they all go down to the tattoo parlour and get their sleeves, work out a little, get nice haircuts and then when it comes to the songs they’re like whatever, you know, whatever. It’s very image-based it seems, but of course, with many many exceptions. But what I see when I put on MTV, on your average show, is like, I can’t tell one band apart from another. What I’m seeing is a lot of attitude and very little thought, it seems. But obviously there’re bands like Morbid Angel that just crushes everything else. So I suppose I both absolutely love the American metal scene and absolutely hate it, but that goes for the general metal scene in the world.

Do you think the record companies have anything to do with that? The whole plastic image?

I don’t know. I’ve played with some of these bands that I don’t really like at all but hanging out with them, they’re always great people with a great interest in music and some of them have – what I would say, for me – a really good taste in music. But a lot of these bands are quite young and they haven’t been around very long and they maybe don’t have the same kind of musical upbringing that I’ve had. I grew up with heavy metal so I’m very quick to dismiss stuff like, “Oh that sounds like Blizzard of Oz and that sounds like something else” so I’m very anal, I’m very critical when it comes to heavy metal bands. Especially metal bands because it all just seems a bit shallow and I want to change the whole perception of heavy metal music just being heavy and aggressive – which is fine, which is cool, that’s something I love about it too – but I don’t want it to be only that. I want it to be perceived as any form of music. I don’t want it to be perceived as a bunch of drunk guys who want to fuck some groupies and play some heavy shit. It’s an art form.

How has the shift to Roadrunner been working for Opeth so far?

Good, they’re the best label for us. Well they do have their demands we do stuff but when it comes to the creative side of things they’ve never interfered with the songs saying, “We don’t like the song, we don’t like the lyrics, we don’t like the production”¦” We were already pretty established by the time they signed us, so they wouldn’t sign us just to change us around. They have what they call their baby bands and those are the new bands like Trivium and stuff like that who are very successful, but I guess those bands are more – I wouldn’t say that is the case with Trivium – but some of the younger bands are more openminded when it comes to the opinion of their record label. Like if their record label says, “If you do a single song, we will present it to Metallica, maybe you can tour with them; you’ll be playing on this radio,” whatever. Well if somebody would say anything like that to us, I mean we have singles too, I’d also be a little bit like “OK,” that kinda stuff but never, when the album is that solid that you can’t break into it from outside, it’s impossible, I would kill them if they asked us to do that [laughs].

But it’s how they want to promote the album where they’re pushing us to do things that we might think are stupid, but whatever. They wanted us to do birthday greetings to fans and stuff like that. I remember once, a certain label – this was before Roadrunner – it wasn’t me luckily because I would’ve refused but they wanted Peter [Lindgren] to call up one of the bosses’ answering machines and say happy birthday. And I was like, “That’s just stupid.” But as long as it doesn’t have anything to do with the music I’m like a zombie, you know, they push me around into TV stations or answering machines and I’d do everything for them pretty much but musically I won’t let them touch me. But I also want to promote the album and they know better than me. I don’t know shit about anything else; I don’t know how you promote records. I don’t want to be in one of those situations where you feel the record label is the enemy and the bad guy and stuff. We have a good relationship with them but I would never trust them with music. I would trust them with basically what we feel like we employed them to do. You have to remember that once you sign with a record label – at least in our case – they came after us and not the other way round so it’s not like we owe them or anything. They want to push the music and promote the music so that’s what I feel we employed them to do and we take care of the music.