Through The Prog Window

After years spent wandering the dark caves of the extreme-metal underworld, with 2003’s Damnation album, awash with that most un-metal instrument the Mellotron, Opeth emerged into the light with leader and songwriter Mikael Åkerfeldt now flying the flag of a card-carrying progressive rock fan. Ahead of the album’s 20th-anniversary reissue, Prog spoke to him about a record he says was “a normal prog-rock record, but for Opeth was completely new and unique.”

Dave Everley

Opeth frontman Mikael Åkerfeldt was sitting in a cheap hotel in the unglamorous Derbyshire town of Ripley when he heard Steven Wilson’s rough mix of his band’s album Damnation for the first time. It was late summer 2002, and Åkerfeldt and guitarist Peter Lindgren were mixing Damnation’s heavier sister album, Deliverance, with Andy Sneap at the latter’s nearby studio. “We only had one pair of headphones between us,” Åkerfeldt recalls now. “I said to Peter, ‘Can I go first?’ I listened to it and thought, ‘Oh God, I can’t believe it’s us. It was pretty amazing to me. I got shivers listening to it. I’ve got shivers thinking about it now.” “I got shivers listening to it. I’ve got shivers thinking about it now.” Until that point, Opeth had been…

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Prog Italia (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 147

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