Opeth recently reissued remastered version of their first three albums – Orchid; Morningrise; and My Arms, Your Hearse – all of which came out on Candlelight Records back in the early-to-mid-90s. Opeth masterind Mikael Åkerfeldt sat down with the label to talk a little about the records, and was humoursly critical of 1996's Morningrise. Y'know, the album that's five tracks 76 minutes long, one of which is the 20+ minute monstrosity "Black Rose Immortal".
"Between [the] three records that we put out on Candlelight, I think my favorites would be the first one and My Arms, Your Hearse," said Åkerfeldt. "The second one [Morningrise], we were just so pretentious then – playing chess, poetry, [stuff like that]. We were just young, you know? But I like them all."
Åkerfeldt went a little deeper down the whole "pretentious" route, explaining that Opeth used to practice in pitch black darkness to make sure they could play everything live without looking at their instruments…. despite having no real plans to tour at the time.
"We also planned our eventual world domination in the live circuit, because we didn't play live much at all in those days, by rehearsing in pitch black darkness so we could play the songs without looking. That's a bit pretentious, but that's what we did. But like I said, we didn't tour much despite practicing for touring"
Check out both interviews below get the reissues here.
