Mikael Åkerfeldt revealed to Revolver what his worst Opeth song was.
“Probably a song called ‘By the Pain I See in Others,’ which is an obscure song on the ‘Deliverance’ record,” the singer replied when asked about the worst song he has ever written. “I didn’t have a single song when we went in to record that album, so everything was written in the studio.”
He continued, “Basically, I was writing music at night, and we would record it during the day. By the end, of course, I was f*cked. I was so tired. I got sick after the recording, just completely burnt out. My sh*t turned gray. I had to go to the doctor and get blood tests. I think that might’ve been the last song I put together for that record, and you can tell.”
“It’s such a tired song. It’s not good. We played it live a couple of times, and it was surprisingly fun to play live. But it’s not fun to listen to, I think,” Åkerfeldt further shared about the track.
‘By the Pain I See in Others’ was part of Opeth’s 2002 album, ‘Deliverance.’ Mikael previously talked with Kerrang about the record and explained, “I had a lot of courage after Blackwater Park. We’d had a lot of success with that album and people were excited about us, but what that led to was me taking on more work than I could handle.”
“So when we went in to do Deliverance and Damnation, I had no songs written. Nothing. No finished songs and we had two albums to record. The record company initially said no to the idea because they thought we wanted to get out of the contract but it was nothing to do with that, I just had that concept for the double album,” he then noted.
The musician stated, “So we went into the studio and I was literally writing the songs at night so that we had something to record in the day. It was terrible. I look back at that period as one of the worst times in my life, although some good songs came out of it, ‘Deliverance’ being one of them.”
Opeth will start their European tour next month with their first show in Helsinki, Finland on February 9.
