Back in June OPETH front-man Mikael Akerfeldt sat down for a chat with Guitarist for a feature reflecting on his career over the past 20+ years with Opeth. The publication has made the full transcript of the interview available online now, and you can read Mike candidly discussing the band’s history, back catalogue, development, line-up changes and more…

“…this one guy [David Isberg] who knew I was playing in a band and we went to school together.” says Akerfeldt on the band’s humble beginnings, “He had a band called Opeth. We were skateboarders at the time and listening to thrash. He thought I was a pretty good guitar player, I believe. He didn’t ask me to come and play guitar because he already had two guitar players in his band. He just asked me to come and play bass because the bass player couldn’t play at all.

That band was just a bunch of friends hanging out at the time. We weren’t really friends but that guy had something like a vision, he knew a lot of people and I also liked the name Opeth, I thought it sounded cool. The logo they had at the time was cool too – it was hand drawn with a big inverted cross and gothic font. It was appealing and I wasn’t going anywhere with my own band. Even though I didn’t want to play bass I thought it was a little bit of a break for me to be auditioning for another band.

But the other guys didn’t know I was coming to the rehearsal – the original bass player showed up too and said, Who the fuck is this guy? They had a huge argument and he fired them. Well we were kids, so five minutes later they had another band and were continuing as normal. Nothing was a big deal in those days – he told them to fuck off and me and him became Opeth…”

CHECK OUT THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE

Opeth recently celebrated their 20th anniversary with a series of special shows, culminating in an appearance at the infamous Royal Albert Hall. The performance was filmed for the DVD In Live Concert At the Royal Albert Hall which is available now. Pick it up online HERE.