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Man commits suicide via metal band Opeth’s tour bus

October 22, 2009 at 10:45 am by Joel Weiss

opeth I’m beginning to wonder if Opeth are cursed.

Over the past few years, bad things tend to happen when the Swedish deathprog metal makers hit the road. When Opeth stopped in St. Pete in 2005, their tour bus driver was arrested for child pornography and flying an underage Michigan girl to meet him in Tampa. Opeth were guilty only by association — they knew nothing about what their driver was up to, and the man was hired by the label for that tour.

Last week, the band’s tour bus was involved in a fatal collision while traveling from Dublin to Brussels on their current European tour. Thankfully, the only band members on the bus at the time were bassist Martin Mendez and keyboardist Per Wiberg (singer/guitarist Mikael Akerfeldt and the rest flew home for a few days to be with their families), and neither were injured.

I’d say the driver of the other car wasn’t quite so lucky, except he got exactly what he wanted.

Opeth_StillLife_cover Although Mikael Akerfeldt wasn’t there for the accident, he pieced together the story with text messages from his bandmates and chronicled the ordeal on his MySpace blog:

Apparently it was a clear suicide attempt as the car had not made a U-turn but was actually standing sideways covering one complete lane. As our busdriver changed lanes, the car backed and covered that one instead, and obviously by then, at approximately 80 km/h, it was all over. Our bus crashed into the driver side of the car and the guy, who was 35-years-old, pretty much died then and there. The paramedics apparently saw signs of life but he died soon after the initial impact….

I just got a text from Mendez who says that the driver of the other car (who made the U-turn) that our bus crashed into, sadly passed away from his injuries. On top of that it seems as if it was a deliberate death-stunt from his side as the police had found a suicide-letter in the car-wreck.

I haven’t talked to the driver yet but he feels like shit of course. Yet I think he saved lives by going straight on. If the bus would have fallen on its side, who knows what might have happened?

Progressive rock informs Opeth’s unique blend of Swedish death metal and acoustic melodies, and Akerfeldt’s lyrics often concern love and death. If I had to pick one band to produce the soundtrack to a funeral, it may well be Opeth.

The driver of the other car probably didn’t know who was in the bus he used as the instrument of his own demise. Any large, quickly-moving vehicle would do. But what a coincidence that he chose Opeth’s tour bus! I wouldn’t be surprised if this experience inspires a song for their next album.

Follow Joel on Twitter @lifeindeadtime

“Demon of the Fall (live)” off The Roundhouse Tapes, 2008