“I became more and more angry. Love is like a mental disease that everybody wants to catch… It can feel so damaging when you’re in the middle of it”: Opeth and the making of Sorceress

Opeth's Fredrik and Mikael throw devil horns in a London pub.

In 2016 Opeth continued their move away from metal and towards prog with their 12th album, Sorceress. Ahead of the launch, band leader Mikael Akerfeldt and guitarist Fredrik Akesson told Prog what made the record different from previous outings.

If you cut through Opeth they’d bleed Mellotrons. Or flutes. Or any classic tool of the prog trade. Since veering away from their metallic roots after 2008’s Watershed, the enigmatic Swedes – who first won over scores of fans with boundary-crushing death metal – have dived further and further into the swirly depths of progressive music.