It was while he was doing the school run one morning that Mikael Åkerfeldt had an idea. And while Opeth fans may have come to expect the unexpected from the Swedish prog collective, the frontman’s brainwave was something else. Don’t do a double album, he thought, but do a record where the listener can choose between lyrics in English or, for the first time, entirely in his Swedish mother tongue. As wheezes go, it’s certainly an original one, particularly when you consider quite how wide and varied Opeth’s palette already is. In the event, although the band consider the English version to be the ‘official’ form of In Cauda Venenum, it’s actually the Swedish version which feels most intriguing and gives the music as an experience a twist. If you don’t speak Swedish, anyway. Much like Ra...
