Tina Sequeira - Ontario Metal
Peter Lindgren - Guitars (Opeth)

Peter: So there's a lot of hardcore fans here, probably never heard about us before.
Tina: Yeah, it's not your typical fanbase.
Peter: Yeah definitely not. The idea is to get some new fans.
Tina: And you're playing with Devildriver again on this tour…
Peter:: Yeah, we did a tour with them in January and Feb last year, that was a bit different than we're used to, but we love those guys! (laughs)
Tina: What kind of fan reaction have you gotten over the last few days?
Peter: Pretty good actually! We didn't expect much because there's around 5,000 people at every show and most of them are hardcore people.
Tina: Actually my friend was joking around before the meet and greet, saying "Just watch, when Opeth come out, the crowd will cheer louder than the people watching that hardcore band on stage!"
Peter: (laughs) Yeah yeah, I know! It's pretty cool, it seems like this a lot of times. I think there's also some people though who have never heard of us before.
Tina: Well yeah, a lot of them are really young… I mean, some of them look like they could be 12 years old!
Peter: (laughing and after a pause) …well, twelve year olds have music tastes too!

Tina: What Opeth song would you choose to introduce the band to new fans?
Peter: Well, that's the songs we play live probably. Because, we're thinking on this tour, instead of pleasing our fans with obscure tracks, we're gonna choose three killer songs that everybody's gonna like. So if I choose three songs, it'll be "Demon of the Fall", "The Drapery Falls" and "Deliverance". But then again this is for a hardcore audience. I would say that Deliverance is a good song because it's got all the ingredients.

Tina: What do you think about the short setlists on this tour?
Peter: Well, we can't do anything about it really - basically everybody's got the same deal, but for us it's pretty stupid to only play three songs. But then again, it's still 30 or 35 minutes, so we don't have to write a new setlist.
Tina: At least it's not like you're just playing Black Rose Immortal because that would be the entire set!
Peter: (cracks up) Yeah exactly! We've been doing three songs, but today we have four.
Tina: Actually my photo pass is for the first three songs…
Peter: Oh that will be the whole show!
Tina: (laughs) Exactly! Anyways, moving onto the new album, Ghost Reveries - you had no producer on this one -
Peter: No, well we had Steven Wilson again, but he was so busy with Porcupine Tree, so he couldn't do it… so we did it ourselves. There's no-one else that we know of that could do it, but we're sort of used to it. Anyway, in the past Steve has produce stuff for us, but he's only there for two weeks. We had this guy in the studio who was engineering everything - he's called Jens - and he's running the studio and he was there ALL the time, which is not what we're used to. We're used to engineering ourselves so that was… different.
Tina: So how was it different, in a bad way or good?
Peter: In a good way, because usually we record ourselves and it's tight, everything is good. But Jens was like "Nope, you have to do it again!" or "You could do it better", you know? So this is the most well-played album we've ever done, by far! He was pushing us very hard, which is good. And we came to a point where he had a day off and we started recording ourselves again. And then we were like "You think this is tight?" Me and Mike were saying that… "I think so… what about Jens?" "No, we have to do it again!" So we didn't trust ourselves either.
Tina: It's kinda hard when you have to keep going back to scrutinise it.
Peter: Yeah, that's exactly what we had to do.

Tina: What about Per's addition to the band?
Peter: Wow, that's a major impact on our music. He's been with us for two years.
Tina: Yeah I saw him two years ago, when you guys toured with Porcupine Tree.
Peter: Yeah that was the first tour we did with him and we wanted to him to keep on playing for that tour, because the mellow songs are obviously with keyboards. And then we wanted to incorporate that sound into the music, so we rearranged some of the songs and it sounded better. So we decided that we wanted to keep on playing like that and Per was the obvious choice. First of all, he's a great player; he was already sort of with us, and also he's a really great guy.
Tina: And he's also on Spiritual Beggars…
Peter: Well, that's a more a side project kind of thing. He's got several projects. Mike Amott was also in that band, and obviously he's with Arch Enemy too, you know. So… err.. we… you know… well… we took him from Spiritual Beggars!! (laughs) But it's of course whenever he's got time to do this stuff.
Tina: Was time commitment an issue for him or was it pretty easy?
Peter: Err, he took his time to decide whether he wanted to be in the band or not, but I think the main reason for him to take that time is because he's been a professional musician for a very long time, and joining a band means sort of giving up your freedom in a way… because we're gonna want him to be on every tour. That's probably exactly why he took some time to reach that decision.
Tina: Did he add anything creatively, like did he have a part in writing the songs as well?
Peter: Oh he was a part, as much as everybody else. What was different this time was that we actually rehearsed! (laughs) And that's a good thing, that's what we've always wanted to do for a long time. It's just that we'd always end up in a hurry, trying to finish the album. But this time we rehearsed and we arranged songs and he had participated in everything. We sort of used keyboards more in the writing process. Before we had vague ideas of what to do here and there, to spice things up. But now it's like an integral part of the music.
Tina: Do you find it easier to work that way, with keyboards this time?
Peter: Hmm well it's just different, it's another instrument which means that you need to listen to it as another voice. But it's also more fun, I mean we've done seven albums together and now all of a sudden there's this new guy in the band! It's pretty cool.

Tina: A while ago when I interviewed you and Mikael… Mike was talking about the new album, which was even written at all at the time. And you said it would be "ice-ripping black metal" -
Peter: (interrupts) And it's not, is it? (grins and laughs) Well, there's always an idea of what the album's gonna be like, but it never turns out the way it's supposed to be. Along the way things change and this one, it's not as fast as we expected it to be. It's rather slow actually, and heavy.
Tina: I heard one track from it -
Peter: Yes, was that The Grand Conjuration?
Tina: Yes.
Peter: That's the evil song! And that's a slow song basically - we added some fast parts, but basically it's rather slow.
Tina: Actually the first thing I thought of when I heard it was that it sounds like very old Opeth and very, very evil!
Peter: (laughs) Yeah, yeah, it's very evil! We call it "The Evil Song"
Tina: In comparison, how does the rest of the album sound?
Peter: Each song actually stands out for themselves. It's the Evil Song, it's that kinda song, it's this kinda song, you know… There's five heavy songs, clocking in at around 10 minutes, all of them. There's a ballad, which is very short. There's a few Damnation kind of songs. There's a mix of everything.
Tina: You guys had previously also mentioned that you were planning for it to be a concept album. Did it turn out that way?
Peter: Lyric-wise, it's not a concept album. Music-wise, well… I guess there's always a concept behind an album. But there's no obvious concept here, it's not like My Arms, Your Hearse. So... (thinks for a minute) I guess it's not at all a concept album. (laughs)

Tina: What were you guys listening to when you recording this album?
Peter: Well, there's always the obvious influences, like we always listen to Morbid Angel and those kind of bands. What we've always listened to. What's new is probably… umm we keep expanding our music tastes - we're all music NERDS!! (laughs) Everything that we like, we just throw it into the pot. We try to incorporate almost everything. So there's influences from Stevie Wonder or jazz to black metal. But that's been the case for a while.
Tina: How do you think your music has progressed from the last few albums? I mean Damnation was SO mellow and then there was Deliverance was just crushing!
Peter: Yeah, but those two we did that on purpose. On the new one, we're back to normal where we actually just do one album. But we wanted the dynamics to be there - the mellow parts and heavy parts. But the main difference is that we have a keyboard player in the band and he's incorporated into the music. And he's playing things you know, as opposed to just doing walls of sound.

Tina: Since you guys are on Roadrunner now, would you ever think about releasing a video?
Peter: There's been talk - we're probably gonna actually record a music video. We had talked about that even with Music For Nations, but that never happened. I guess it's all a matter of time. We always have too long songs, so I guess there's gonna be an edit, in some way. …Which we don't like, but I guess we're at a point in our career where we sort of realise that an edit might do us good.
Tina: Yeah, the radio edit CD that I got you guys to sign earlier, of The Drapery Falls - that had been cut down to about 5 minutes.
Peter: Yeah, it's like a taster almost. But… so be it.

Tina: I also wanted to ask you a side project between Mikael and Dan Swanö -
Peter: Is it Bloodbath?
Tina: No, no - the other one, Sörskogen
Peter: Ah okay, that's the other one! Well, that was like a long time ago - he'd gone back home and had three songs in Swedish - you know, about where he was born or whatever (laughs) So he went down with Dan and recorded it at his studio at the time. Got drunk and had a good time, that was it. But actually… a part of that project is actually on Damnation - on "In My Time Of Need" there's a little vocal line that is from that project.
Tina: Wow, I had no idea! I heard Sörskogen and it sounded really mellow and proggy.
Peter: Yeah, but that was you know, at the time, it was a totally different thing. A very non-Opeth thing. But now that we had Damnation, it perfectly.

Tina: Okay, I've got two last questions.
Peter: (whispers) Okay, let's go!
Tina: I noticed at the merch booth that you guys had a shirt with the old Opeth logo. Why did you choose to bring that back?
Peter: Well, actually those are leftovers from another tour. We thought it would be a cool idea to bring back that logo. But that logo has never been on an album or anything. We just thought that it would be an obscure thing, you know? (laughs). We like to do things that we wanna have ourselves. The reason that we put out the limited edition vinyl is because we want that ourselves too. There was an original shirt like that - I've got one and Mikael has got one. There's only 50 copies of that. (laughs) So we decided, for our own sake you know - it's not a major seller or anything, because the logo doesn't - it's not - well, you know… (laughs)

Tina: (laughing) Okay, this last question is for a friend of mine who is writing a book about metal musicians and metal fans. What made you get into metal initially?
Peter: Well, when I grew up, before I got into metal, you listened to whatever was on the radio, Bonnie Tyler or whatever, you know. But then a friend of mine played Hallowed Be Thy Name by Iron Maiden, and then the whole album and I was like "Yeesss!!! This is it!!!" (laughs) And from that point, metal was it. So it took me several years for me to make up my mind to listen to other types of music. For a long time, for me, it was like… ONLY metal.
Tina: Yeah, I think everyone goes through that phase!
Peter: Yeah, I had that phase as well. I think it took a long time before I actually bought an album that wasn't metal. So, Iron Maiden did it for me!

Tina: Okay well thanks so much for your time Peter, and I can't wait to hear the new stuff live when you guys come back in the fall!
Peter: Oh thanks to you as well, it's been great! We've played Toronto a lot, we love it!