Swedish Heritage Tour 2012

Swedish progressive metallers OPETH will embark on the “Swedish Heritage Tour 2012” in November. The dates are as follows:

Nov. 29 – KB – Malmo, Sweden
Nov. 30 – Katalin – Stockholm, Sweden
Dec. 01 – Club 700 – Örebro, Sweden
Dec. 02 – Nefertiti – Gothenburg, Sweden
Dec. 03 – Nefertiti – Gothenburg, Sweden
Dec. 04 – Sodra Teatern – Stockholm, Sweden
Dec. 05 – Sodra Teatern – Stockholm, Sweden
Dec. 06 – Maxim – Gävle, Sweden
Dec. 07 – Skandiateatern – Norrköping, Sweden

Metal Hammer TV conducted an interview with guitarist/vocalist Mikael Åkerfeldt of Swedish progressive metallers OPETH at this year’s Download festival, which was held June 8-10 at Donington Park in Leicestershire, United Kingdom. You can now watch the chat below.

OPETH recently completed a North America co-headlining tour with MASTODON. The trek kicked off on April 4 in Portland, Maine, and visited more than 30 cities in the U.S. and Canada before wrapping up at Atlanta’s Masquerade on May 12.

OPETH‘s new album, “Heritage”, sold 19,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to debut at position No. 19 on The Billboard 200 chart. The band’s previous studio CD, 2008’s “Watershed”, opened with more than 19,000 units to land at No. 23.

“Watershed” was the follow-up to the band’s acclaimed “Ghost Reveries” CD, which debuted at No. 64 on the Billboard chart back in September 2005 with first-week sales of just under 15,000.

OPETH‘s 2003 album, “Damnation”, premiered with a little over 5,000 copies.

When asked how OPETH planned to deliver the more technical songs from “Heritage” in the live show, vocalist/guitarist Mikael Åkerfeldt said in a 2011 interview, “I thought that might be a problem. But it’s not been difficult at all. The live versions of the new songs sound closer to the originals than many of the other songs. We have a new keyboard player who’s really into the different sounds we create and he’s got lots of kit. When he plays, it’s like he has four arms. He’s doing a lot to make sure the current live show is something very special. But we’d never record anything that we didn’t think we could pull off live.”