OPETH's new album, Heritage, will be released on September 20th in North America, and September 19th internationally, via Roadrunner Records.

Play.com are offering a pre-order for a special edition CD+DVD of Heritage, which comes with an exclusive coin (see below). The DVD contains a 5.1 mix of the entire album and a making of the album documentary. Also contains a card to download bonus tracks 'Pyre' and 'Face In The Snow'. Pre-orders can be placed at this location.

Heritage tracklisting:

'Heritage'

'The Devil's Orchard'

'I Feel the Dark'

'Slither'

'Nepenthe'

'Haxprocess'

'Famine'

'The Lines in My Hand'

'Folklore'

'Marrow of the Earth'

To ease the pain of having to wait to hear Heritage, BraveWords.com caught up with leader/prog-metal visionary Mikael Åkerfeldt this week for a quick overview of the band's next magnum opus!

"We recorded 12 songs, where ten are on the album," says the frontman. "Two songs are being saved for the special edition. So there's ten songs and Per (Wiberg; former keyboardist) is still on the album even though he isn't in the band anymore. He's playing keyboards on the entire album. I'm plating keyboards too. We also have new keyboardist Joakim Svalberg (YNGWIE MALMSTEEN, GLENN HUGHES) who is going to tour with us. He's not a member yet. We just did the first show with him (at the Bonnaroo Music And Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee) a few days ago. He's also on the album playing the opening number ('Heritage'). The songs are all over the place. I'd like to think that all of the songs have their own identity so to speak. One song is a little tribute to RONNIE JAMES DIO (called 'Slither') and it's a kind of gimmicky sounding song, tongue-in-cheek. The working title of that song was called 'Kill The Queen'. It's done as a tribute to him because we love him so much. The other songs move from folk music to prog-rock to jazz, crossed with PINK FLOYD and fusion like HERBIE HANCOCK or WEATHER REPORT. We actually have the (former) drummer/percussion player from Weather Report on the album - Alex Acuña (ELVIS PRESLEY, PETER GABRIEL, CARLOS SANTANA). We also have a Swedish fusion flutist who is playing a flute solo to a doomy riff. It's all over the place and a fun listen. It's really challenging and I don't think it's boring. It's very complex with a beautiful mix and a beautiful master. It was mixed by Steven Wilson (PORCUPINE TREE) and myself and mastered by a guy by the name of Peter MEW at Abbey Road Studios in London who has engineered many, many obscure records that I've collected over the years. It was recorded at an old, vintage studio in Stockholm called Atlantis studios, which used to be a record label called Metronome. It's where ABBA did all their albums pretty much. So back to these songs, I don't know how to explain what they sound like. They are all over the place. And one song is not representative of the whole album."

Åkerfeldt recently sat down with Holland's FaceCulture for an in-depth interview coveraing a variety of subjects. Check out the footage below: