MIKAEL ÅKERFELDT Discusses His Colourful Music Titles & The Time He Unintentionally Wrote A Poop Lyric

Opeth mastermind Mikael Åkerfeldt is extensively celebrated not just for his musical prowes, but in addition for his richly expressive and infrequently enigmatic lyrics. Identified for weaving uncommon and evocative language into his songwriting, Åkerfeldt approaches lyrics as an artwork kind in itself.

In a latest interview with Sinusoidal Music, Åkerfeldt opened up about his enduring love of phrases and his drive to make Opeth‘s titles and lyrics as visually and sonically putting because the music itself.

“Properly, I sort of stopped that course of now with the final album as a result of [they’re all named paragraph numbers]. I imply, to me, it is identical to… the aesthetics whenever you take a look at a track title, they’ve at all times been vital to me. I’ve at all times been drawn to these perhaps not-so-common phrases. I am like a little bit of an Anglophile in that sense.

“I obtained a lot inspiration from movie, albums, and different bands. Simply decide up an Iron Maiden file, as an example. Or simply the title ‘Iron Maiden‘ — like, what’s that? That is superior. Little did I do know it is a torture machine. I simply sort of checked out lovely phrases and checked out the that means.”

Åkerfeldt additionally mirrored on a lyrical misfire in Opeth‘s “The Night time And The Silent Water Lyrics” that reads “Lonely cesspools / Relics of the moon-dogged lake / Whisper, ‘All of your phrases are misgiven.” saying it isn’t fairly what he meant.

“Through the years, I’ve made a couple of errors the place I believed a phrase meant one thing, and it meant one thing fully completely different. I keep in mind I wrote some lyric that was purported to be lovely lyric — I can not keep in mind which track—however the lyric was like: ‘lonely cesspools.’

“And the label on the time was like, ‘Lonely? Like, lonely cess… like, lonely holes of shit?’ I used to be like, ‘No, is that what—?’ You understand, it was sort of… I do not know. It was simply not what I wished to write down, so to talk.

“However yeah, I identical to to experiment with language. And there are not any guidelines. Not even grammar. I do not actually listen. Like, I need it to be right, however I permit myself to fuck with the grammar — to make it look or sound bizarre. You understand, freedom. Inventive freedom.”