NewsNovember 22, 2024 8:10 AM ET1,187 views

Opeth deliver visualizer lyric video for "§4" from new album 'The Last Will And Testament'

opeth 2024

Progressive metal titans Opeth have shared a visualizer lyric video for the song, "§4", off the band's fourteenth album, The Last Will And Testament, out today, November 22nd via Reigning Phoenix Music. The track features Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull

Purchase The Last Will And Testament here

Frontman Mikael Åkerfel shared the following:

§4' is an oddball song, just written by instinct. I'm not a clever guy when it comes to writing music. People call us 'thinking man's metal,' I think that's laughable. I listen to music from so many different genres, it's impossible to me to stick to one genre. I find the idea boring to try and belong somewhere, we're a bit all over the place, and I think this song shows our diversity. For '§4' I was inspired by something called 'twelve note music,' which I think is a classical term, where you're supposed to play twelve notes und you cannot repeat a note twice. I heard some of that music by classical pianists playing, and it sounds wicked, it sounds evil, it sounds really strange - so that inspired the initial guitar theme. There's a melodrome theme in the beginning, it just sounds odd, like it doesn't fit in, almost like a free-form jazz solo or something like that. But it quickly kind of lands in an almost traditional metal theme with a common response type death metal vocal that has a stereo double-tracked normal vocal response.

I can't remember what happened during the writing process, but I reached a point where I just stopped and felt, 'ok, time for something strange!' We ended up with a flute solo by Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull, which was kind of an accident in a way, because I asked him to do a narration, not flute. As he was doing the spoken word bits, he asked me 'do you need a flute solo?' I was like, 'yes, please!', while I didn't really have a part for a flute solo! I had to shuffle through the songs quickly in my head before he would change his mind. I had him on the hook, of course I was gonna find a piece! So, he played almost like a common response type flute solo in '§4.'

This is a great song with the ending piece being one of the more evil pieces of music I've written in a long time: it sounds really menacing, sick almost!

 




Related News

THE VANFLIP PODCAST
THE VANFLIP PODCAST
#169 - Brandon Zackey of Whitechapel

THE VANFLIP PODCAST
THE VANFLIP PODCAST
#168 - Mark Hunter of Chimaira