Chapter X

As usual when you've had a hectic time touring there's no place like home. I usually feel physically and mentally ill when I come off tour and I've got problems sleeping. Sometimes I wish I had a stereo next to the bed with bus engine sounds and that the bed was rocking a little. I have a love/hate relationship with night liner coaches but the beds...well, I love sleeping on a moving bus! However, after all the touring we did for Deliverance/Damnation/Lamentations I was excited to spend time at home with my wife and newborn daughter. For the first time in...years I guess I felt genuinely good. Writing the new album was a pleasure too. I had no real worries about anything, I knew I wanted to write some music that was out of the ordinary, but really, I felt at ease from the get go. I recorded my demos the same way as I demoed the stuff for the DD records, but I was on time which I haven't been for over 6 years. Since "Still life" I have not been finished with the songs in time for the recording, we haven't rehearsed at all for the last 5 records which is quite insane. We did 0 rehearsals for "Still life", 2 for "Blackwater park" and 1 for "Deliverance/Damnation". And it got to a point where that spontaneous feeling that can produce wonders was almost lost. We had discussed early on that for "Ghost reveries" we needed to rehearse. I was very keen to let the guys more into the songs beforehand so they could work with their parts more and well, be part of the creative process.

So, we ended up rehearsing for almost 3 weeks. I finished all the songs but one before we entered the studio! Nice!

I had been fooling around with a Korg Triton keyboard that we bought for Per on the "Damnation" tour and I had some serious ideas to bring more keys into the heavy material as well. Per Wiberg had finally agreed to join Opeth full time and I was fucking excited to write music for the recent 5 piece. I can't play the keys to save my life but I could make out some chords and I do have the rhythms in me (not blowing my own trumpet) so I did actually come up with some cool stuff. I had Per over to record some decent playing on my demos as well. During rehearsals it was growing together nicely. The stuff sounded fresh, new, we're treading new territories once again.I even felt the "magic" during the very early stages of rehearsals. We'd been looking for studios in which to record and we were down to a choice between to places: Fascination street studios in Örebro/Sweden and Sonic Ranch in El Paso/TX. As we needed to be able to go back home we decided it's better to record in Sweden. We figured since we're so well rehearsed for a change we won't need them 2-3 months in the studio to record. Beaming with confidence I booked Fascination street studios from the 18th of March to the 15th of April. We finished the recordings on the 1st of June.

Music for nations officially closed its doors forever last year and Opeth was for a very short while directly signed to BMG but obviously we got dropped since...well, we're metal! It took hours until the first new offer came through...

Myself, Peter and our manager Andy Farrow went travelling around the world to meet with the most interesting labels out of the 31 offers we got. We met with Century media, SPV, Inside Out and Roadrunner. The SPV meeting was very surreal as the boss, Manfred and his entourage was sipping brandy and tea and basically shouting at each other in German before going "It's OK" to our suggestions of things they could do for us. I loved those guys, Manfred is a man who's been in the business for a long time and the first thing he said to me was "If you sign to SPV I'll give you the record from Dull knife!! (Which is a super obscure krautrock group from the early 70´s)...thanks, but I already have it! "I fixed the very first gig for Eloy!!! (Another semi obscure German band)...impressive! To be honest, things like that got my heart beating faster as I could only image how many great Lp's this guy would have in his collection. I'd fucking sign to them for his record collection alone I admit! As we left the office I got the entire reissued catalogue of one of my favourite German bands, Popol vuh.

If you're reading this Manfred, "Thanks!!" Manfred also told me that for the first time in history SPV and their subsidiary Inside Out we're "bidding" for the same band.

All the meetings were very interesting, I especially liked Thomas from Inside Out who seemed to me like he's the only super honest record boss in the world. I was very impressed with him to be honest. Century media was like meeting old friends as I've been in touch with them since we did our first record. Robert Kampf is one of the nicest people in the business and his boyz, Ula and Leif I consider friends. However, Roadrunner were the ones who impressed us the most with their set up and their "sales talk" really got to me. In the back of my mind I had images of the classic RR records that meant so much to me...King Diamond, Mercyful fate, Slayer, Obituary, Deicide, Pestilence as well as all those guitar records of the 80´s. I'm the first to admit that their current roster doesn't really interest me all that much, but their history is quite impressive! I mean "Maximum security" by Tony McAlpine alone is reason enough in my book, or maybe not?? We met with both the UK office and the American one which is the actual office signing us. I've been told this is the first time in history that Roadrunner directly signed a band to the US label.