| faalhaas |
| EINDBAAS |
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 Posted 19-07-2011 2:23 by faalhaas |
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quote:
So, last week on tuesday, I was flown over to Stockholm, Sweden, as the honored lackey of Sue Magazine to take part in the pre-listening of Opeth’s upcoming new album, Heritage. It’s due for release late September and the specific purpose for me being there was to make a preliminary story base for September’s issue. Properly nice of Roadrunner Records’ PR-side to pay for the flight and set up a room at one of the local Best Western hotels. Google even claimed that it was a 4 star place. Very nifty for my standards so I took their word for it.
Before heading out to the highway, I was joined at the hotel by two Finnish colleagues. Let us refer to them here as Mr. Soundi and Mr. Inferno according to their respective magazines. Very jovial personalities and experts of their musical fandom fields. An appropriate amount of jibberjabber later we took the short walk to Atlantis Studios at 57 Karlsbergsvägen, where the upcoming album was recorded. A superb old school-feel hovered around the place, almost aura-like. Lots of vintage gear, both instruments and recording equipment. Even made the band relax appropriately when we were there.
Prior to the actual listening, we had a nice time chatting with the fellow reporters from around the world, the managerial people and nicely enough the guys of the band too. We Finns naturally did our best to try and taunt/milk a reaction from the band about the Finnish men’s national ice hockey team brutalizing the Swedes 6-1 (you might’ve heard about that if you’ve been reading this blog) but sadly, none of them were that much into hockey. Herr Svalberg maybe a little and even he mainly concentrated on admitting that on the day of the finals, there was one team on the ice and they crushed. Myself, Mr. Soundi and Mr. Inferno were naturally pleased.
Going back quickly into the old school-aura of the studio, I gotta bring up the awesome history of the place. Opened in the early 1940s, it has hosted quite the impressive list of musicians in roundabout 70 years. I found the ABBA-connection particularly groovy considering their stature as the Scandinavian megastars of probably forever. Seems they’ve recorded at least four of their albums at Atlantis, including songs like Waterloo, Take A Chance On Me, Thank You For The Music, Money, Money, Money… hey, you go and try remembering how many hits they had.
But OK, so cool, free flights, awesome studio, yaddayaddayadda mate…C’MON! What was the new album like? Death metal? Prog? Disco? Glam? More studio pictures? Any late night shenanigans?
So, after waiting for a few hours worth of pleasantries with the obligatory smörgåsbord and red wine……meeting the veteran in charge of mixing the new album (dude’s resume even included some Bowie and Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma) and all that civilized bruhahaa, it was time to sit down with a pen and paper in the main studio room and take in Heritage in a fiercely commendable 5.1 Surround Sound-setting (yes, meaning amazing sound quality).
Now, I naturally/unfortunately can’t spill the beans to the kind of extent where I’d run down all the material in reserve for the September-issue of Sue (interview and track-by-track rundown with main man Mikael Åkerfeldt included), but here’s a barrage of some possibly intriguing notes that made it onto my paper:
- “Really going classical with this piano intro.”
- “Upright bass, jazzy-style, really? Sweet. Will there be rockabilly?”
- “The Deep Purple-fan in me grins widely.”
- “Getting folky, Jethro Tully, I see what they did there.”
- “ORGANFLOODS OF THE APOCALYPSE!!!¤#”%!”!!”
- “Lots of haunting noises going on again…”
- “The production definitely old school yet clear and punchy, I can dig it.”
- “Man, 5 songs in and not a single growl.”
- “Mereckons however many death metal purists have stuck on board so far are jumping off at this pier.”
- “Well, this is really Opeth gone jazz.”
- “Thelonius Åkerfeldt…well, maybe not quite.”
- “Samples of speech and coughing…I say, ghostly again.”
- “Then perhaps instead Mikael Hancock…or maybe hand-in-cock if we asked him directly…”
- “Widdly widdly guitar antics still provided, flourishes of bongos, maybe djembes, percussionomics…”
- “FLUTES! YES!”
- “Now that’s a nice serving of gorgeous acoustic guitars…very, very fitting.”
Ok, so you may get the idea. To summarize to an extent…first off, there was not a single growl on the record. Death metal was just not on the menu for this one. Instead there was a barrage of groovy 70s influences from the haziness of Pink Floyd to the rocking of Rainbow. Yes, plenty of rocking going on, distorted guitars, epic riffage etc. The absence of guttural demonics has not led to a rerun of Damnation (for the uninitiated: it’s Opeth’s most “newagey”, soothing and non-distorted album). I repeat that the drenched-in-70s covers many, many aspects. Old school maniacs like myself will be ecstatic, methinks. I mean cripes sakes, just look at the already-released cover art.
We’ve got the earth, the sky and Hell with the assorted diabolicals, the band’s faces ripening on the tree and a magical city of flames in the background…it just oozes the prog and psychedelia of the 1970s. Brilliant. Also, colour- and vibe-wise it reminds me of King Crimson’s In The Wake Of Poseidon.
Great stuff. Just reading through my notes here I recall that the listening experience was a great one and I can’t wait to get the actual end product, album sleeves and all, into my grasp and into my hearing system, repeated ad nauseum.
There ARE heavy riffs. Plenty of them. Chill, mates. Well ok, if your definition of heavy riffs goes along lines like “death metal or no metal at all”, then you may be up shite creek without even a boat. But taking it mostly from a 70s heavy rock/early-years-metal point of view, there are oodles of heavy bits. It bears repeating, Heritage will not be Damnation 2 or Loungenation 1.
And speaking of the jazz, to anyone possibly weirded out by my numerous references to renowned jazz pianists concerning the sounds on Heritage…no, it’s not that jazzy. Or is it? Well, I can say that namedropping the likes of Thelonious Monk and Herbie Hancock were more just impulsive notes made on the spot while in the studio. I mainly added them to these posts for a laugh. But don’t let this disclaimer make you think that suddenly there’s no jazz on the upcoming record, because there is. It’s just done the Opeth way. Which also makes me want to hear Opeth covering Monk’s Straight, No Chaser and Hancock’s Chameleon. Those could be some awesome pieces of fusion.
But where was I, as far as the trip goes…well yes, the album was listened, awesome stuff. Improptu photo sessions were had around the studio along with me just scurrying around and snapping shots here and there (I’ll attach some of those to the bottom). A little more conversing with the band, thanking them at large and we were off to Stockholm’s food-and-drink circuit with Mr. Soundi and Mr. Inferno. Good chicken wings, moderate beer.
A little later on Mr. Soundi contacted a very groovy friend of his. Let’s call him Mr. Director due to his extensive background at directing music videos and concert video recordings for commendably big bands. We visited his extremely nifty pad in Stockholm that clearly had taken a handsome budget to acquire and enjoyed some of his yet-to-be-released footage with a little whiskey. An extremely gracious host, I say. He also took the time to show us to one of his nearby pubs that also featured a special guest appearance from one Mr. Peter Tägtgren, the man surely best known to metalheads as the frontman of Hypocrisy, Pain and the mad professor lording over The Abyss-studios.
So overall, good times great memories were had. After just a day on the road for this mission, returning to Helsinki-Vantaa Airport was a lightly bewildering exprience in the “Well, I guess that actually happened, cool”-sense. Less than 6 months after starting to write stuff for Sue Magazine they (with the gracious help of Opeth’s PR-agency of course) had shipped me to listen to the new Opeth-record over 3 months in advance, chitchat with the guys and otherwise rummage around Stockholm for a day. Heck, sign me up for more.
Fhew, that ended up quite lenghty on its own.
Yours in getthisalbumreleasedalready,
-Aleksi-
Sue Magazine
[Dit bericht is gewijzigd door faalhaas op 19-07-2011 2:27]
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