OPETH Guitarist on the 'The Grand Conjuration' Video

Justin Donnelly of The Metal Forge recently conducted an interview with OPETH guitarist Peter Lindgren. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow: On criticism the band received from their fans for signing with Roadrunner Records: Peter Lindgren: "At first, it sort of pissed us off. I mean, look at us. We've been doing our own thing for fifteen years. We weren't going to sign with Roadrunner Records and suddenly turn into a nu-metal band, you know. I think people are stupid when they believe that a record label like Roadrunner Records can change an old band like us. It's not like some American record label dude is going to turn up and tell us to start wearing baggy jeans. Are Roadrunner Records going to tell us to have a rapper on the next album? No. It was never going to happen. We don't even have producers involved when making music because we don't trust anyone. I guess most of the criticism has come from a bunch of kids. They found out that we have signed to this so-called nu-metal label, and in turn they believed that we would turn into a nu-metal band. Hell, even some of the new pictures we had taken of the band were criticized. Some kids out there complained that the grass didn't look green enough. Get a life! (Laughs) In the end, we just give up caring what those people thought. They should know better. After all the years that we've been doing our own thing, we're never going to change for anybody." On the group's fist video clip, for the song "The Grand Conjuration": Peter Lindgren: "We always said that we're not really fans of doing videos, unless we do a full-length video of a full-length song. But obviously we realize that the idea of that ever working is never going to happen. Our songs are too long, and nobody is going to put the work in to doing a 10-minute video if nobody is going to show it. So we thought that the only way we could do it was to edit the song down. We don't like edits ourselves, but we still decided to go ahead and do it. Roadrunner Records told us that we only had one evening to shoot all of our performance footage, and that it would have to be done while we were on tour. We asked about who was going to direct it, and they told us it was going to be Bill Yukich. We asked what the storyline was going to be, and they sent us three or four distinctly different ideas. So we didn't know what was going on. The whole situation was so chaotic, in the end we just decided to go down to the shoot, get the footage of us all filmed and simply fuck off. And I think the final result is in accordance to that. We didn't have a clue as to what was going on, and I don't even like it how it turned out. It doesn't have anything to do with the music, or even the lyrics. We asked Yukich a couple of questions, and he didn't answer any of them. He was pissed off the whole time. I don't know what the story was there. They sent us the final result, and it was awful. We soon decided that there were some fucking changes that needed to be made, and then that's when our management and Roadrunner Records came back to us [and] told us who this guy had worked with in the past (FOO FIGHTERS, H.I.M., PROBOT) and all the work he put into this video. After having been in this band for all these years, we thought that the first time that we would do a video that it would turn out great, but instead it looks like my cat sat on it! (Laughs) So we were pissed off at the time, but at the end of the day, it's just a video, so who gives a fuck?! Having a video played on TV is probably a good idea. So any press is good press in a way. I think it's going to fulfill its purpose. Then again, we have friends calling us saying, 'This is the worst video I have ever seen in my whole life!' And we agree. I just wish it had been a great video, but it wasn't! (Laughs) I do like the ideas of doing videos. Even the APHEX TWIN video for 'Come To Daddy' by Chris Cunningham is a great example of what is possible. But he's also terribly expensive and semi-retired, so we can't use him. But we would like to have something more interesting than what we were given next time. I think we're going to do more videos, but next time we'll try and take control of things a little more." Read the entire interview at TheMetalForge.com.