Talk:Opeth

Grammar

"Opeth is also well known for their incorporation of Mellotrons in their work." I think we should stick to the singular "Opeth is well known for...its..." or go with the plural "Opeth are well known for...their...". I gather that Wikipedia uses the singular for bands, so it should be "its incorporation". Thoughts? Equinox ◑ 21:18, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

Exact year of formation

Two recent edits spurred me to check the article's sources on the band's early years. Of the sources in the lede and first history paragraph that I was able to read—the article "Pressing the Red Button" by Joel McIver, published in the January 2008 issue of Metal Hammer magazine, does not appear in the magazine's online archives or in any Google search—two say 1989 (musicradar.com and astra-berlin.de), a third says 1990 (allmusic.com), and the rest do not mention the exact year that the band formed. After initially reverting the edits, I have changed my mind and left them in, reasoning thus:

• Mike DaRonco at Allmusic refers to 1990 as the year when Opeth was "Brought together in Stockholm by guitarists Peter Lindgren and Mikael Åkerfeldt." However, the other two sources, as well as this article itself, tie the formation of Opeth to the first meeting of Mikael Åkerfeldt and David Isberg—which, they state, occurred in 1989. Therefore, it seems to me that the timelines presented are not truly inconsistent; instead, one author chose a different event in the timeline to mark the band's formation date. I think the article should use the earlier event; otherwise, why mention Isberg and Åkerfeldt's first encounter at all?

Huntthetroll (talk) 17:25, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Well the context matters. Was that first meeting for the purpose of working on music together and starting Opeth? If so, that should be the founding date. Otherwise, unless one of the founding members said when exactly it was founded, you should go with what most reliable sources state. Lapadite (talk) 04:43, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

Good question. Let's compare what the sources say with what the article says. The lead currently refers to David Isberg as the "founder" of Opeth. The first English-language source is an archived version of the second chapter of the band's autobiography on opeth.com, attributed to Mikael Åkerfeldt:

I met David Isberg sometime during the same time I did Eruption. We were into this skateboard thing, you know? All of us were having a fucking skateboard. Anyway, he was really into extreme music as well, and I guess I owe it to him that I like this music so much. He really sparked my interest when he loaned me the Mefisto demotape called "The puzzle"! I was awestruck! They had cool solos, grim vocals, acoustic guitars, everything! I thought they were way better than most Death metal records I had bought. Together with Morbid Angel, Death Bathory, and Voivod, Mefisto became a big influence for all my future compositions. During the same time Eruption died, Opeth started to live.

David had formed the band together with some bums from Täby. The name was taken from a book by author Wilbur Smith, and was originally spelledOpet without the "h" at the end. The meaning was unknown for me until I quite recently found the book myself, and got the knowledge that Opeth is the city of the moon.

Eruption was dead, and I wanted to get into some other band. David had earlier showed me the Opeth logo, the old one with the inverted cross, and I was really impressed with that logo, so I guess I got somewhat interested in the band since I had seen it.He approached me one day asking if I wanted to play bass with them.

I thought I could try it out, so one evening we went to their reh-place in Täby. The thing was that none of the other guys in the band knew that I was coming, and they didn´t really want to kick out the bassplayer they already had. The climax was when the other bassplayer appeared as well. It was fucking embarrassing! They started arguing about the matter, and the very same night, Opeth was history, at least for the Täby guys. They renamed themselves "Crowley" and released a terrible demotape called "The gate" in 1991.

However, me and David wanted to do something together with Opeth. We "reformed" Opeth as a 2-man band. I remember at the time that we said that Opeth was destined to be the most evil band in the world!!

As you might understand I was more or less influenced by the occult back then, although in no serious manner. Music wise I was really into the twisted, dark, and evil-sounding riffs. The lyrics written by both me and David were pure Satanic chantings!The two songs we I first wrote was "Requiem of lost souls" and "Mystique of the Baphomet" (later "Mark of the damned" and later "Forest of October"). However, we needed to complete the line-up. We asked Anders to join the band which he did. We also asked Nick to join as a bassplayer. A second guitarist was found in Anderas Dimeo.

In short, according to this account by Åkerfeldt, Isberg first formed Opeth with a group of people who left once Åkerfeldt joined, and who had nothing further to do with Opeth. Isberg and Åkerfeldt then got three other people to join, notably not including Peter Lindgren. (Not linked in the article, but relevant to this discussion, is the second half of the linked chapter in the autobiography, in which Åkerfeldt explains how he met Peter Lindgren.) The first paragraph of the History section, as currently written, is consistent with the quoted account, as is the reference to Isberg as the "founder" in the lead.

The next English source that discusses the origin of the band is an interview with Michael Åkerfeldt conducted by Rob Laing for Guitarist magazine and posted on musicradar.com:

...nobody knew who the fuck we were except for this one guy [David Isberg] who knew I was playing in a band and we went to school together.

He had a band called Opeth. We were skateboarders at the time and listening to thrash. He thought I was a pretty good guitar player, I believe. He didn't ask me to come and play guitar because he already had two guitar players in his band. He just asked me to come and play bass because the bass player couldn't play at all.

That band was just a bunch of friends hanging out at the time. We weren't really friends but that guy had something like a vision, he knew a lot of people and I also liked the name Opeth, I thought it sounded cool. The logo they had at the time was cool too - it was hand drawn with a big inverted cross and gothic font. It was appealing and I wasn't going anywhere with my own band. Even though I didn't want to play bass I thought it was a little bit of a break for me to be auditioning for another band.

But the other guys didn't know I was coming to the rehearsal - the original bass player showed up too and said, Who the fuck is this guy? They had a huge argument and he fired them. Well we were kids, so five minutes later they had another band and were continuing as normal. Nothing was a big deal in those days - he told them to fuck off and me and him became Opeth.

— Mikael Åkerfeldt

The sequence of events presented here is the same as in the previous source, which makes sense because both are derived from Åkerfeldt's recollections. You should note, however, that neither quote mentioned the year that Isberg formed Opeth, or that Isberg met Åkerfeldt. The autobiography section from opeth.com does not mention it at all, but the Guitarist interview mentions it later on, when Åkerfeldt says "I wish - to a certain extent - that we were the same guys who played together in 1989." He does not specify who these "guys" are, but the logical inference is that he is referring to the first full lineup that included him—i.e. him, Isberg, and the three others mentioned in the autobiography. In other words, Opeth was already a going concern in 1989.

Besides the Allmusic profile discussed earlier, the remaining source on the band's origin is a profile in German on the website of the Berlin concert venue Astra, which states the following:

Dabei begannen Opeth, die 1989 aus den Resten der Heavy Metal-Coverband Eruption hervorgingen, als traditionelle Death Metal-Truppe. Schon bald entdeckte Bandleader Åkerfeldt seinen Hang zu einer bezugsoffeneren Arbeitsweise und lud neben ständig neuen Musikern immer wieder andere Stile und Klangelemente in den Opeth-Soundwall ein. Seine Hartnäckigkeit wurde belohnt. Mit „Blackwater Park“ gelang Opeth 2001der Durchbruch. Seither zählen sie zu den kreativsten harten Acts Europas.

(via Google Translate) Opeth, which emerged in 1989 from the remains of the heavy metal cover band Eruption, began as a traditional death metal band. Band leader Åkerfeldt soon discovered his penchant for a more open-minded way of working and, in addition to constantly bringing in new musicians, kept adding different styles and sound elements to the Opeth sound wall. His persistence was rewarded. Opeth made their breakthrough in 2001 with "Blackwater Park". Since then, they have been one of the most creative hard acts in Europe.

This quote is consistent with Åkerfeldt's statement, in the autobiography, that "During the same time Eruption died, Opeth started to live." The source is overall much less detailed than Åkerfeldt's accounts, and lacks a credited author. Nonetheless, of the sources cited in the article, Allmusic is the odd one out in dating the origin of Opeth to the first collaboration of Mikael Åkerfeldt and Peter Lindgren, allegedly in 1990. Huntthetroll (talk) 20:45, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

The key sentence from the first link is "David had formed the band together with some bums from Täby". That establishes that David Isberg and the individuals from Täby founded Opeth. Both the bio website and the MusicRadar interview with Åkerfeldt state that the band existed as Opeth before Åkerfeldt came in. And, as you note, Åkerfeldt also stated in MusicRadar: "I wish - to a certain extent - that we were the same guys who played together in 1989", which establishes that he was in the band in 1989. So, the latest founding date for Opeth is 1989. If there is no earlier date available for when Isberg and his friends started the band, then 1989 is the logical date to use. AllMusic clearly uses Åkerfeldt and Lindgren's partnership in 1990 as Opeth's "arrival", which is evidently inaccurate to use as Opeth's founding date. To avoid edit wars over this or drive-by changes sans new information, it's best to quote the sentences that pertain to the founding members and founding year in the reference(s), using the |quote= parameter. Lapadite (talk) 10:36, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

I agree with your reasoning. I will use |quote= as you suggested. Huntthetroll (talk) 01:13, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Sorry for the late reply. The first sentence that says 1989 doesn't have the Music Radar citation, which is the interview where Åkerfeldt says 1989. Without it, it's vulnerable to someone challenging it because it's not verified by the cited source at the end of that sentence. And in the quote parameter of the Music Radar citation, I would instead quote the direct sentence "I wish - to a certain extent - that we were the same guys who played together in 1989", that way you leave little ambiguity. Lapadite (talk) 10:07, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

No worries, it's been done. Huntthetroll (talk) 18:26, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi guys, I wanted to address this topic because I noticed that the List of Opeth band members still has 1990 everywhere. Good to see that the discussion already happened. Could you maybe also make those changes to that page, and others like the one for Orchid? :) Seelentau (talk) 23:13, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Huntthetroll Lapadite please ignore my previous reply. I researched some more and came to the conclusion that 1989 is not the year Opeth was formed. First of all, the Berlin Astra source is not really trustful. The Astra is just a concert venue in Berlin, they very likely simply copied the year from somewhere else, maybe even Wikipedia. Mikael's interview is of course more trustful, but by the nature of the interview, it's wrong. The interview was conducted in 2010 about the band's 20 years of existence. If they formed in 1989 (or earlier), it would've existed for 21 years in 2010. And on top of that, he wasn't even a member when Opeth was formed.
That said, someone who was there when the band was formed was the original vocalist, David Isberg. He wrote on Facebook a few years ago that the band was formed on April 7, 1990, when he met the other members for the first time. Funnily enough, he even mentions checking Wikipedia and seeing that the date was wrong (also explaining the Astra using the year), which made him post about it: https://i.imgur.com/G3lV58D.png - this alone proves the correct year of formation. However, I know Wikipedia doesn't like these kind of original research sources, and Facebook as a source is always iffy, but the fact that the original vocalist corrected the year should prove that the websites etc. giving 1990 as the year of formation are correct, right? Seelentau (talk) 14:55, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Addendum: In the Book of Opeth, Mikael says about David: "Although we were never really close - we'd have fights and end up hating each other for periods of time - he was a very important figure in my life. He formed Opeth in early 1990." Seelentau (talk) 15:46, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

The Astra page sounds like an example of citogenesis, as you said. I agree with the rest of your reasoning as well. Do you have a link to Isberg's actual Facebook post? Huntthetroll (talk) 17:04, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Of course there's an xkcd for that :D I wasn't able to find that exact post, because it seems to be private, but he also spoke about it here. And here is a German interview where he mentions it again. There's also a very old text from him that was posted in 2001 in a forum where he also speaks about the very early days. And of course, Mikael speaks about it in the Book of Opeth, although I don't know the exact page. Hopefully the interview and forum post suffice? Seelentau (talk) 17:35, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Great finds! I think that the German interview is the best possible source. We should include a direct quote in the citation, in both original and translated language. Although the Ultimate Metal forum is a potential gold mine of links, I would not use that post as a source, both because it is self-published and because it merely reproduces, allegedly, the content of another webpage—which, in turn, cannot be verified, because the original site is gone and only a small portion of its contents has been archived. Huntthetroll (talk) 19:26, 16 August 2024 (UTC)