When bands head into the studio to record, a lot of the time they have no idea what they’re going to end up calling the finished product, write MTV.com reporters Chris Harris and Jon Wiederhorn. Bands will often employ amusing “working titles,” just so they have some point of reference as they hammer away at the new material. After all, it’s hard to talk about something when you don’t know what to call it.
Opeth are no different. The Swedish death-metallers aren’t sure yet what they’ll wind up naming their new album, which they started recording November 1 and just finished tracking. But contrary to online reports, the band’s second Roadrunner Records effort certainly won’t be titled A Holocaust on the Moon “
I never heard that one before,” frontman
Mikael Ã…kerfeldt told Metal File last week, mere hours after returning home from the studio.
So, just what are they calling the follow-up to 2005’s Ghost Reveries for the time being? What they call every album, up until the point they decide to give it a proper christening: Suck Pu.
“I’m sure that’s going to change,” Ã…kerfeldt said with a laugh. “I have to come up with something cool.”
According to Ã…kerfeldt, the forthcoming LP was one of his favorite to make, and sounds like an album he’d go out and buy.
“I had more fun working on this album than any of the past records,” he confided. “I have always seen the recording of an album as having loads of problems for a month or two. But this one was easy. It was fun and it was interesting. I could probably say I even enjoyed it.”
But the recording wasn’t entirely hassle-free. The disc will feature a church organ on one track, which was recorded inside a real church. The Opeth boys convinced the local clergy to let them use their organ for an afternoon. “And [keyboardist] Per Wiberg went in there and broke it, playing a really doomy, devilish-sounding riff.” Ã…kerfeldt is still waiting on an estimate from the church on how much it’s going to cost to have it repaired.
Opeth’s ninth studio set is due to arrive in stores in the spring, smack-dab in the middle of their U.S. trek with Dream Theater, 3, and Between The Buried And Me. “We recorded it in two studios bass in one studio, guitars in the other so I haven’t had the control over this recording as I have had in the past,” the singer said. “So I’m not 100 percent sure how everything sounds, but I know it’s going to be great.”
Read more at MTV.com.
