How did Mike and the band come up with such an exceptional story this time?
On the previous album, ‘Cauda Venenum’, there was one track that involved family arguments regarding splitting up the testament and will. Maybe the seed was kind of planted there. This eventually resulted into a concept album. It is a story from the 1920’s. In this case his children got ready mad at him after they read his testament and will. There are also many different signals and they experience different stories that they are not aware of, relieving certain things. People who are interested in this, can dig deeper into this. You will be able to discover a lot as soon as you get the album and the lyrics sheet. Mike also mentioned that he was influenced by the TV series ‘Sucession’ as well, which deals with the consequences of the will of dad. That gave him inspiration for the concept.

Did the idea and lyrics for that concept come before you had written any new music or after that?
It developed during the writing process of the music. The basic idea was there, but the music was completed before the actual story was 100% crystallized, because we had working lyrics for the songs that Mikael recorded. The general concept was there, but it was more a morphing along the writing process of the music as well. Maybe just a week before we went to the Rockfield studio, It was in February this year. Then everything was really done.

In Rockfield Studios it seems that you have a nice time, because it was far away from everything…
Yes, it is a residential studio, so you can have the option to work long hours there. We saved a lot of time, because they served breakfast as well (chuckles). It is a beautiful place, basically you are living on a farm in the countryside. In the morning when I opened my curtains, sometimes there was a horse before the window or a flock of sheep. It is a really beautiful countryside adventure. There was a village in the neighbourhood. Sometimes we walked to the village, there were a few inns and stores, but they are old school, as in every smaller town. It was our third time there, but it was different this time. There are two studios and this time around we went to the Quadron studio which is a bigger one where Queen did their classic album with ‘Killer Queen’ and ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was composed and recorded over there. Rush was once there. Ronnie James Dio and Heaven & Hell albums were done there. So it has a lot of history. I got to stay in the same room as Ronnie James Dio did and Mikael was staying in the one that Toni Iommi and Freddy Mercury used to stay in. Spooky nights in a nice way (chuckles). It is still the same family exploring it. It is a little bit our second home now. We feel relax there and it is good for bonding as a band as well.

Oh yeah there are times that you won’t see each other for a long time… or do you still make casual appointments to have a beer or so?
Yeah yeah that still happens. Absolutely. I mean, Martin Mendez, our bass player, he lives in Barcelona. That means he comes here for rehearsing and work on stuff, but the rest of us we tempt to meet up for a beer and now and then we go to a show. Stuff like that.

The lyrics for the album were written with a little bit of help by Klara Rönnqvist Fors. Who is that?
As far as I know she was involved in the twist at the end, in the last song ‘A Story Never Told’. There is an interesting twist that you can dig deeper into when you put your teeth into the album. Klara was behind that and it is very cool turn in the story.

How do you see this when Opeth is going to play live? Are you going to play excerpts now and then or are you going to take a part as a whole?
So far we have rehearsed five tracks. Some of them are a little bit depending on all these string arrangements. So that will require a string ensemble. If we would play the entire album at some point, it definitely has to be a special event, because it demands doing it in its full glory, because we don’t use tapes. We are old school, we have to play everything. You have to take some stuff out anyways when you play live. I cannot play rhythm guitar and melodies at the same time. So the keyboards has to replace it. You have to rearrange the songs a little bit, because there are so many layers in the album and we only have two arms and two legs each. Maybe in the future we will play it in its entirely, but not now. We will play at least three or four songs on the upcoming European tour.

That makes sense, because it is a layered album with different approach…
Live we are still entertainers, people want to hear some old stuff and some new stuff of course and we have to find a good balance between those two.

Opeth has been with Nuclear Blast for a long time. I know that RPM is a kind of sequel from the earlier NB initiator Markus Staiger, but what are the reasons for switching to RPM?
To make a long story short, there was Nuclear Blast and then the owner Markus Staiger sold it and started a new label called Atomic Fire. Then Atomic Fire was sold to the guy who is now the boss of RPM. That is basically the short story, but before Nuclear Blast, we were on Roadrunner as well and before that we were on Candlelight Records also. It has been a few labels, but RPM seems great. They are really pushing the album it seems and we went to meet them and it was a great time. It results in a deeper connection if you meet the people behind a label, it is good for the band. Usually you get emails and you don’t see a face, so it was very cool to do. We had a listening session with some journalists and dig into things. They also have a beer brewery. We tasted some beers. It was nice.

Let us go back in time, the time before you played in Opeth. How did you meet Mikael and how did you end up in Opeth?
I met him at this pub in Stockholm. He started talking to me. He knew who I was. He saw me playing in a band. We were playing covers of Dio, Saxon, King Diamond, Judas Priest, Accept and Black Sabbath. He came up to me and said he really liked my guitar playing. He was asking me if I could give him guitar lessons. I was like: ‘wow, I am not as good as you’. To make a long story short, I was in a band called Arch Enemy for a while and we toured together in America, with Megadeth on this so-called Gigan tour. And we got along very well. When I got back after touring with them, I was asked to leave, because Christopher, the brother of Arch Enemy’s Michael Amott, wanted to come back and then just a week after that, Mikael called me and asked if I could come over to his place ‘maybe you can teach me some stuff as we talked about’ he said. Oh yeah sure, I come over, I said and he was kind of secretly auditioning me when he asked me to play the ‘Deliverance’ riff and I taught him some stuff. I think that was the reason for him, to check me out. ‘Window Pane’ he wanted to check out, playing the more finger-picking acoustic side of guitar playing.

Very smart, as always…
Yeah these are the two elements that are required in Opeth. And I guess I did it, because a week later he just called me up and asked me joining the band. I was a little bit in a dark place, because I didn’t know what to do and shortly after I got this amazing chance with Opeth, I was also a big fan of all their albums. I bought their albums and listened to them. For me it was a dream comes true. I love the music and that is most important, but also the fact that we get along very well is very nice. Doing that tour before, that of course helped when we hang out. I think I hang out more on the Opeth tour bus, than I actually hang out on the Arch Enemy bus. That was of course a good foundation for this.