Of all of the encounters Mikael Åkerfeldt has had together with his heroes through the years, it’s the evening he bought pissed and danced with the blonde one from ABBA that sticks in his thoughts.
It was 2011, and Åkerfeldt’s band Opeth had been engaged on their tenth album, Heritage, at Stockholm’s Atlantis Studios. Within the 70s, when it was referred to as Metronome, ABBA had recorded their first 5 albums there. The identical man nonetheless owned the studio, and was nonetheless in contact with Agnetha Fältskog, one among their singers. As large ABBA followers – obligatory in Sweden, punishable by jail for anybody who isn’t – Opeth would carry up her identify sometimes. “I’d joke: ‘How’s Agnetha doing? When’s she coming all the way down to do visitor vocals?’” says Åkerfeldt now.
On the final day of recording, the studio proprietor invited Opeth for dinner within the flat they owned on prime of the studio. Who ought to open the door whereas providing a tray of champagne however Agnetha.
“I misplaced it,” says Åkerfeldt. “I went straight again outdoors and smoked 5 cigarettes in a row all the way down to the butt.”
As soon as he’d bought over his nerves, he went in and tried to carry it collectively. The free-flowing alcohol helped. Over meals and booze, Agnetha fortunately regaled the members of Opeth with outdated ABBA conflict tales. The proprietor and his spouse had a jukebox full of outdated Fifties singles, which is how, in some unspecified time in the future within the night, Åkerfeldt discovered himself grooving alongside to some long-forgotten quantity with Agnetha from ABBA.
“I danced with the Dancing Queen,” he beams. “To not Dancing Queen, sadly. The studio proprietor used to hang around along with her, and he stated the Heritage report was at all times out by the stereo in her home – and it wasn’t within the shrink-wrap.” He beams once more. “She positively listened to it.”
Sadly, a fantasy Opeth/ABBA collaboration by no means occurred, though it’s a mark of Opeth’s standing in 2024 that they’ll nonetheless reel in some huge names when they should. Their new album, The Final Will And Testomony, options cameo appearances from Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson and, extra bizarrely, Europe singer Joey Tempest.
It’s an idea report, set within the Nineteen Twenties and centred across the studying of a rich patriarch’s will and the response his odious, venal kids need to their inheritance, or lack of it. Every track represents a bit within the will, with seven of its eight tracks dishing out with conventional titles in favour of the chapter signal, §, and a quantity (§1, §2, and so on). It’s Succession as scripted by Edgar Allan Poe.
“I liked Succession,” says Åkerfeldt. “And I really like Poe, in order that’s good. I want a narrative to offer me focus. I’ve by no means written good lyrics. They’re a obligatory evil to me. You would write about dying and Devil and evil and ghosts so many occasions, and I’ve written about them many occasions.”
We’re speaking within the downstairs cinema of the Sanctum, London’s most upmarket rock’n’roll resort. Åkerfeldt sits on a settee together with his legs crossed, sporting an on-brand Jethro Tull T-shirt, whereas guitarist Fredrik Åkesson leans again within the chair subsequent to him. Åkerfeldt is the king of self-deprecation, a hairier Hugh Grant. “When did I grow to be comfy with being a singer? Nicely, by no means,” he says at one level.
The Final Will And Testomony is a mini-tour of Opeth’s musical journey so far, bearing on every little thing from the knotty prog steel of the late 90s and early 2000s, to the extra pastoral, corduroy-jacketed vibes of the previous decade or so. Åkerfeldt even sparingly unleashes his old-school dying steel growl for the primary time on report in 15 years. “Folks had been apparently crying that it was again,” he says, trying equally bemused and happy on the truth. “I nonetheless get criticised as a result of you’ll be able to truly hear what I’m singing.”
After which there are these cameos. Ian Anderson seems on a number of tracks, offering some richly thespy narration because the late patriarch and likewise some strategically deployed flute. It solely took Opeth 14 years to get him on one among their data.
“I emailed him in 2010 to ask if he would seem on the Heritage album, and he didn’t reply,” says Åkerfeldt. “Then a number of years in the past I did a filmed interview at Amoeba Information in Los Angeles. I instructed this story: ‘I despatched an e mail to Ian Anderson, and that fucker didn’t reply.’ It was tongue-in-cheek, however someone should have seen it as a result of I bought this e mail: ‘Ian would like to play the flute in your album.’ So after all I requested him to do the narration as a substitute. And someplace within the course of, he requested: ‘[polite voice] Do you want some flute?’”
In essentially the most unlikely hook-up since Lemmy and The Nolans, the monitor §2 sees Anderson and Joey Tempest buying and selling strains in a sort of call-and-response. Anderson is smart on an Opeth report. However Tempest?
“Joey Tempest is fucking superior,” Åkerfeldt says, with out irony or hesitation. “We had lunch at my home once I popped the query, so to talk: ‘I’ve this half, would you have an interest?’ And he goes: ‘Let’s do it, activate the microphone.’ Right here’s Joey Tempest saying he’ll report his vocals in my fucking basement.”
However Joey Tempest and Opeth?
“He’s my idol. I at all times thought Europe had been superior, even throughout these years while you’re not imagined to take heed to bands like that.”
Do you sing The Ultimate Countdown at karaoke?
“I hate karaoke,” he says vehemently. “In the event you’re a singer, folks anticipate you to be fucking superior at it. Fredrik is a lot better at it than I’m.”
“Solely once I’m pissed,” says Fredrik. “Judas Priest’s Painkiller, I can do this. Full screams.”
Throughout the pandemic, Åkerfeldt nearly purchased a report store, referred to as Mickes Skivor (Mike’s Discs) in Stockholm. He and Fredrik are common prospects there. When Mike the proprietor instructed Mikael the musician he was promoting it, he steered Åkerfeldt may need to take it on. If nothing else, he wouldn’t have to vary the signal.
“I used to be truly eager about it,” he says. “I labored in there to be taught the ropes, simply to see if it was value shopping for.”
What had been you want as a salesman?
“I used to be nice,” he says, as Fredrik nods in settlement. “Typically it felt like I used to be doing social work. Quite a lot of report collectors are on the spectrum. Folks didn’t are available to purchase, they got here in to speak. I felt like their therapist.”
Ultimately he didn’t purchase it. Partly as a result of the proprietor didn’t actually need to promote it. But additionally, as a person who views outdated vinyl LPs as holy relics to be revered, truly shopping for undesirable data depressed the hell out of him.
“It was often some man who had handed away and left this large report assortment that his kids would by no means have a look at, so all of the sudden it’s grow to be this fucking burden,” he says. “It was such a tragic factor. These folks had been amassing for years and years, and the children had been simply: ‘Fuck this shit.’”
That neatly ties in The Final Will And Testomony’s themes of poisonous inheritance and internecine household warfare, although Åkerfeldt’s personal youngsters presumably wouldn’t have fairly the identical unsentimental strategy to his personal huge report assortment. Considered one of them, his 16-year-old daughter Mirjam, seems on the brand new album, including ghostly vocals to opening monitor §1. It’s a candy contact however a barely unusual one too. Youngsters are imagined to insurgent in opposition to their dad and mom’ music, not seem on their data.
“I requested her and she or he stated: [adopts air of distracted teenage nonchalance] ‘Certain,’” says Åkerfeldt Sr. “Apparently we’re huge on TikTok, so we’re cool,” he provides with the air of a person who views TikTok with the identical fondness as a medieval peasant views leprosy.
On the day she was to do the recording, Mirjam had gone off the concept. “I needed to drag her all the way down to the studio. She sat there Snapchat whereas she was doing it, then she pissed off again to her room. However now she is aware of the response to it has been good I can inform she’s satisfied.”
Åkerfeldt himself was the identical age as Mirjam is now when he joined Opeth in 1990. He was simply the guitarist again then, stepping up as vocalist solely when authentic growler David Isberg left in 1992. He’s the only real remaining member left from these days, steering the band from their authentic extreme-metal incarnation via to their extra intricate, inspiring present incarnation. Alongside the way in which they’ve misplaced a few of their older, gnarlier followers and gained some newer, much less gnarly ones. However nonetheless: 34 years and 14 albums. How the hell did that occur?
“Perseverance and stupidity and never bailing out when it will get robust,” he says. “However I don’t sit and surprise the place the time went. The factor that depresses me is once I have a look at different bands’ discographies. Most of my favorite bands, their fourteenth album was shit, and their thirteenth album, and the twelfth one. Perhaps solely the primary three had been good. A part of me thinks: ‘Have we been doing shit albums for years?’”
You don’t imply that, although, do you?
“No, I feel our fourteenth album is fucking superior. However so did my favorite bands with their shit fourteenth album.”
If Opeth are something, they’re proudly out of time. A number of years in the past, Åkerfeldt was despatched right into a match of apoplexy when he was requested to hawk a Nokia telephone on stage at a gig in India that was being sponsored by the telephone firm. “I already used a Nokia telephone, however I bought house and introduced a special one,” he says, nonetheless narked.
They might have gotten trollied with one among ABBA, however don’t anticipate a holographic Opeth present. And don’t even get them began on AI. “I’m a bit petrified of it,” says Fredrik, like AI is a creepy doll that’s all of the sudden appeared within the attic.
Inevitably, the web has already thrown up a number of AI songs written within the type of Opeth. Åkerfeldt says he’s not seen them, however sounds curious sufficient to examine them out. Thoughts you, it seems like he’s already had a go at it himself.
“We had been at a cocktail party when Chat GPT had simply come about,” he says. “We had been a bit drunk and my girlfriend put ‘write a lyric within the vein of Mikael Åkerfeldt’ into it.” How was it? “It was shit. ‘There are ghosts within the bushes…’”
Truly, that does sound like an Opeth lyric.
“My buddy who’s in [Swedish gumby metallers] Grand Magus was on the identical feast, and did the identical factor. His lyrics got here again and he was, like: ‘Very good!’”
Know-how apart, Åkerfeldt has discovered to hate a number of different issues throughout his 34 years in Opeth. Chief amongst these is the arduous grind of touring. At 50 he’s now not one among nature’s travellers.
“I hate it. I don’t prefer to go away from my household and my cats,” he says, effortlessly slipping into Younger(ish) Fogey mode. “Individuals who say their pursuits are ‘travelling and globetrotting’? You fucking idiots. It’s the worst factor.”
He says he harbours a fantasy of working in a grocery retailer once more, one thing he did a protracted, very long time in the past. “I romanticise regular jobs. I do know folks have robust jobs, however simply to have a standard routine as a substitute of an irregular routine… The report store, that was a bit little bit of seeing if there was a method out of touring for me. So I might tour once I needed to somewhat than once I needed to. However there’s a accountability to the opposite guys within the band and the folks we work with and the folks round us. [A pause] However I’d prefer to have that choice.”
Whether or not music’s loss ever turns into the retail business’s achieve stays to be seen, though it appears unlikely. Opeth way back made the transition from surly underground malcontents to latter-day rock mainstays. The logical subsequent step is elder statesmen, a task that appears to be tailormade for Åkerfeldt. It’s onerous to think about him quitting to promote baked beans this far into the sport. And anyway, Agnetha from ABBA might have one thing to say about it.
The Final Will & Testomony is out now. Opeth tour Europe in February and March 2025. Get tickets.