“I wouldn’t normally be caught dead with a Tele because I think they’re ugly, but that’s the only guitar I used”: Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt and Fredrik Åkesson on their love of “stupid riffs,” and “recapturing that old death metal magic”

Opeth's Fredrik Åkesson [left] and Mikael Åkerfeldt sit on an old sofa with their PRS electric guitars. Åkesson looks off into the distance while Åkerfeldt stares into the camera.

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-flavored musical meditations.

Some even went as far as sending death threats, enraged by how their favorite musician had forsaken the underground extremities that launched his career in favor of more avant-garde and psychedelic influences which – let’s face it – had always been detectable in his wildly creative pursuits.