21st Century Schizoid Men

How did a Swedish death metal band end up releasing one of the greatest progressive rock masterpieces of the modern age? Opeth's MIKAEL ÅKERFÉLUT looks back on 20 years of Damnation

- AMIT SHARMA

Ever SINCE THEIR formation in 1990, Swedish metallers Opeth have been no strangers to wild experimentation and unexpected detours into the creative leftfield. Even their 1995 Orchid debut showcased a bunch of musicians who simply refused to exist within the usual confines of death metal — borrowing elements from long-distant worlds such as jazz and classical and then fusing it all together into something greater than the sum of its parts.

But even the band themselves would admit that 2003’s Damnation album — a 43-minute love letter to their vintage progressive rock influences — was something they never quite saw in their own destiny. After breaking out of the underground and making their mark internationally with the Steven Wilson-produced Blackwater Park in 2001, the Stockholm-based quartet now had the world’s attention. For singer/guitarist and mastermind Mikael Åkerfeldt, who had undertaken the role of writing virtually all of the music early on, it was now time for his band to really spread their creative wings in the form of two records — the extreme brutality of Deliverance and its calmer companion, Damnation, released six months later. So when exactly did he realize his metal band was going to start working on music that would had little to do with the guttural roars and blast-beat fury they were typically associated with, and did he ever consider releasing Damnation as another project entirely?