“There’ve been times where I’ve come back from a tour and my kids don’t know who I am”: Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt on 25 years of Blackwater Park, another Steven Wilson team-up, hating the road and why he might stop growling again

Opeth in 2001.

“Oh, shit,” Mikael Åkerfeldt sighs. “Boring!”

The Opeth mastermind is on a video call with Metal Hammer and – after a five-minute preamble where we’ve spoken about Godflesh, Killing Joke and Led Zeppelin – we’ve informed him that we need to talk about his band now.