Opeth

OPETH frontman Mikael Škerfeldt has issued the following update:

What you don't know won't hurt you... Well, I'm going to tell ya!

I just got back from the Melloboat, basically the floors are still moving underneath me and I'm beyond exhausted, but it's all worth it. Myself, my wife and my youngest daughter, Mirjam all checked into the semi- posh Commodore suites of the Silja Symphony boat, and I knew right then this trip was going to be a memory for life.

I wasn't really nervous for our own gig, even though we hadn't played since last Summer and even though our setlist consisted of a few songs we hadn't played for a long time plus one new song, 'Heir Apparent'. I asked my wife to cut me some slack as I my brain was literally working overtime, overheating.

I'd talked Stefan into fixing a slot for us at 10 pm which is basically regular gig time, since we don't like the play in the middle of the night. Easily arranged and a one hour gig was scheduled for the big stage (well…kinda) of the boat. I didn't have time to see any bands prior to us, so I missed Anekdoten, but I know they're great, they always are.

Our main objective for the gig was to have a good time. It's seen as a warm up for our coming UK and USA tours and I think it's done us good. Basically I had a blast, we all did! None of us we're playing flawlessly or anything like that, and the sound was a bit iffy, but we fucking had a blast straight through. The crowd was great, singing along, seemed like many people were really happy to see us again, and also maybe slightly relieved that we're sounding like Opeth after all the line-up changes. I knew that. In fact, in the rehearsal room the day before the show we all agreed on that we have never ever sounded this good ever before. I even enjoyed rehearsing "The drapery falls". That's pretty weird since I can't remember having rehearsed it with any kind of emotion since 2001 or something. Love the song, but we've played it to death I the past. Now it felt so fresh and basically it was one of my favourite songs that night. We did a slower version of "Harvest" which I really liked. The new one came out fine, even though it had the most mistakes…mainly technical mistakes. It was fun to play it and the crowd seemed the really dig it. Everyone that came up to me afterwards said it was their favourite song of the night, which is not a bad thing I guess."

Read more here