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Opeth leader Mikael Åkerfeldt and fellow guitarist Fredrik Åkesson love to experiment with new sounds. But in a surprising twist, the band’s latest album is a return to their roots. As Mikael says: “It’s that old death metal magic!”

- Amit Sharma

Mikael Åkerfeldt has been called many things over the years. At best, the Opeth leader has been hailed as a visionary. But when his band’s tenth studio album Heritage was released in 2011, a vocal minority of fans lambasted the singer/guitarist for abandoning his metal roots in search of more progressive and folk-flavoured musical meditations. Some even went as far as sending death threats, enraged by how their favourite musician had the forsaken underground extremities that launched his career in favour of more avant-garde and psychedelic influences which – let’s face it – had always been detectable in his wildly creative pursuits.

For the most part, however, the Swedish quintet were deeply admired for daring to march to the beat of their own drum, resulting in the breathtaking sounds heard on the three albums that followed.

Deep-diving into the ethereal unknown, converging elements of blues, jazz, and classical in ways no group had ever dared, these cinematic and progressive orchestrations would twist and turn in the most delightful of ways, cementing their stature as world-class innovators and true masters of their own destiny.

But Mr. Åkerfeldt, as we’ve grown to learn, can be a tad unpredictable, to say the least. In August of this year, when Opeth dropped the first track from their new album The Last Will And Testament – a track with the enigmatic title §1 – fans were amazed to discover that the guttural roars and blastbeats of old had returned.

Why? And why now? As Mikael tells it, this was always going to happen, but only ever on his terms, and when the time felt right…

It’s a late-summer afternoon in London when Mikael and the band’s lead guitarist Fredrik Åkesson meet with TG in the downstairs bar of the Sanctum Hotel in London, a place affiliated with Iron Maiden. Naturally, the pair are also enjoying pints of Maiden-branded Trooper IPA as they discuss the making of The Last Will And Testament.