Wat kan ik nog meer over deze nieuwe single vertellen wanneer Mikael Åkerfeldt dit hieronder reeds op zijn eigenzinnige manier doet? Stukken gewoon vertalen zoals een aantal collega's doen en dan zogezegd als 'eigen' tekst neerzetten? Goh, laat maar, daar doe ik niet aan mee. §4 laat zo ongeveer alles horen wat Opeth in haar bestaan gecomponeerd heeft en voegt daar een musical feel aan toe. Het nummer bulkt dus van jazzinvloeden, progressiever dan dit kan gewoon niet, grijpt terug naar de death metal dagen en voegt een scheut uit het latere werk toe. Naast de gangbare instrumenten gooit de band er nog wat mellotron en flute bij. Alles mooi verpakt zodat het nergens overdreven bombast wordt, maar zo kennen we hen natuurlijk. Opnieuw van een torenhoog muzikaal niveau waar ik heerlijk van kan genieten... en toch raakt het me allemaal wat minder dan voordien. Dat rockopera gehalte mocht van mij gerust achterwege blijven, al is dat misschien het enige vernieuwende element op het nieuwe album.
The Last Will & Testament is op 11 oktober 2024 verschenen via Reigning Phoenix Music / Moderbolaget.
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Opeth frontman Mikael Åkerfeldt comments on the track:
"'§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 mellotron 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!“
