“It suddenly made me feel so mature. I remember getting the shivers! It was not death metal”: How Jimmy Page, Stevie Wonder, Grand Theft Auto III and Steven Wilson helped Opeth become modern-day prog icons

Mikael Akerfeldt

Ever since their formation in 1990, Swedish metallers Opeth have been no strangers to wild experimentation and unexpected detours into the creative leftfield. 

Even their 1995 Orchid debut showcased a bunch of musicians who simply refused to exist within the usual confines of death metal – borrowing elements from long-distant worlds such as jazz and classical and then fusing it all together into something greater than the sum of its parts.