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The Latest Breaking News from Mikael Åkerfeldt

“Is this the best guitar I’ve ever played? Including the ones in your museum? I believe so”: Mikael Åkerfeldt has played Kurt Cobain’s 1953 D-18 ‘Grandpa’ and 19th-century holy grail acoustics but says his Martin OM signature beats the lot of them

Limited to 74 instruments worldwide, the Opeth frontman's signature model has a truly exquisite three-piece back of Guatemalan rosewood with an East Indian rosewood wedge

MusicRadar

“Never did I actually expect to get the chance to see one up close, let alone play one”: Everything that caught my eye at Guitar Summit 2025 – from the grand unveiling of a brand-new guitar company to the year’s most anticipated amp modeler

Rosengarten Mannheim became a scorching-hot cauldron of all things guitar for three days – and there were plenty of highlights

Guitar World

“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

Mikael Åkerfeldt on his violent games, hotel balcony prank, soaking a label exec in vodka, and being left to make music his own way

Metal Hammer

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“Is this the best guitar I've ever played? Including the ones in your museum? I believe so”: Opeth's Mikael Åkerfeldt teams up with Martin to create a new signature acoustic that blends traditional style with a key, ultra-modern twist

Mixing the old and the new, the front porch and campfire with devil's horns, the limited-edition model is luxurious from top to bottom

Guitar World

“They asked Kate Bush, ‘Why do you write about this stuff?’ She said, ‘Well, I’m not very interesting!’ It’s the same with us”: What Sylosis learned from prog stars including Opeth, Tool and Rush

Frontman of the British metal band and his colleagues accidentally discovered a breadth of influences after feeling uninspired by their peers

Metal Hammer

Watch Opeth pay tribute to Ozzy Osbourne with heartfelt cover of Black Sabbath’s Solitude

The prog metal mavens offered an excellent tribute to the Prince Of Darkness at a festival last weekend

Metal Hammer

Classic Rock's Tracks Of The Week: July 28, 2025

Eight songs you need to hear right now, from Tuk Smith, Blues Pills, The Vintage Caravan and more

Louder

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"You want a smack in the face in the beginning." How Ghost Of Perdition went from a concept about Satanism to the defining Opeth anthem

Opeth might've ditched the concept record idea for Ghost Reveries, but Ghost Of Perdition still tells a story

Metal Hammer

“Ever dreamed of owning a piece of Nirvana’s legacy?” A Kurt Cobain guitar pick previously sold for more than $14k – now his MTV Unplugged plectrum is being raffled off for much, much less

The raffle will help raise funds for the Royal College of Music – and it offers the chance to own a slice of music history for just the price of a coffee

Guitar World

Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt explains why Steven Wilson stopped producing their albums: “I could hear some ideas in my head that I like to think he would have brought up”

Prog idol Steven Wilson co-produced Opeth’s Blackwater Park, Deliverance and Damnation albums – Mikael Åkerfeldt explains why he didn’t return for Ghost Reveries

Metal Hammer

“He says he’s mediocre. I understand – I say the same thing. But he’s a great musician, and that has nothing to do with ability”: What Mikael Åkerfeldt’s peers really think of him

Steven Wilson, Mike Portnoy, Steve Hackett and Arjen Lucassen list the reasons they like and admire Opeth leader Mikael Åkerfeldt

Louder

“The lyrics just blew my mind. That song changed the way I write. I think Steven Wilson is really poetic”: Killswitch Engage’s Jesse Leach loves Porcupine Tree

Killswitch Engage vocalist Jesse Leach chooses his favourite Porcupine Tree song, and gives some love to Pink Floyd and Mikael Åkerfeldt

Metal Hammer

“I was so sick. I had tunnel vision and couldn’t walk. I was crawling to the toilet and I thought I was going to die”: The unbelievable rise of Opeth, the band who went from death metal no-hopers to prog royalty

Inside one of the most remarkable success stories in modern metal

Metal Hammer

“When the saxophone started we laughed and skipped it… The reason I dismissed them then is exactly why I like them now!” How doom and occult keyboardist Carl Westholm was converted by Van der Graaf Generator

Ex Candlemass and Avatarium member was won over by prog veterans’ Godbluff album – and it started with a photo of Mikael Åkerfeldt with Peter Hammill

Louder

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“It’s a really good album, but I’m not sure it’s better than the ones that came before. You ask, ‘Why didn’t this happen sooner?’” Many consider Blackwater Park to be Opeth’s masterpiece. Opeth don’t

The classic line-up had assembled, Steven Wilson was contributing and Mikael Åkerfeldt was mining songwriting gold – but you can’t convince him the 2001 release was their magnum opus

Metal Hammer

“It was s***. The singing’s s***, the playing’s s***”: Opeth covered a beloved Iron Maiden song – and Mikael Åkerfeldt really, really doesn’t like it

The Opeth frontman also reveals which of his songs he feels are overrated in a new interview with Metal Hammer

Metal Hammer

“Haven’t we been f***ing great tonight?!” Prog metal legends Opeth bring a career-spanning setlist, staggering visuals and more than a little self-confidence to sell-out London show

Rejuvenated after latest album The Last Will And Testament, the prog/death metal masters honour both sides of their sound with cinematic accoutrements

MusicRadar

“I’m a Nirvana fan, but it was just a regular guitar to me”: Opeth frontman Mikael Åkerfeldt left unimpressed by Kurt Cobain’s “haunted” Martin acoustic

Åkerfeldt got a chance to play the late Nirvana frontman’s 1953 D-18, aka Grandpa, in a recent visit to the Martin Museum

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Metal Hammer

“It didn’t feel that good. There was nothing special about it, other than it had belonged to Kurt Cobain.” Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt wasn’t impressed when he got to play the Nirvana frontman’s guitar

The Opeth mainman admits he wasn’t that wowed when he recently got his hands on Kurt Cobain’s “haunted” guitar

Guitar World

“Someone told us that guitar was haunted – people who had it had accidents. I’m a Nirvana fan, but it was just a regular guitar to me”: Opeth's Mikael Åkerfeldt said the Martin museum felt like the “Holy Land,” but one guitar he played there left him cold

Åkerfeldt was decidedly more moved when handed a 19th century Martin, a guitar so pristine he was scared to play it

Metal Hammer

“It had a 13-minute spoken-word black mass on the B-side”: The mysterious late 60s album that Opeth’s Mikael Akerfeldt says invented Satanic rock

Six months before Black Sabbath released their landmark debut album, another band were praising Satan

Louder

“From here I drew a line to Pink Floyd and painted my room black … who knows where I’d be now if I’d never heard them?” Mikael Åkerfeldt, Bruce Soord and others pick their favourite Camel albums

Five prog musicians explain the lasting impact of Andy Latimer’s band

Metal Hammer

"After shaking her hand, I went out and had like five cigarettes in a row just to calm myself down. I get starstruck easily": Opeth's Mikael Åkerfeldt on the time he met ABBA's Agnetha Fältskog and had dinner with her

Mikael Åkerfeldt looks back on the time he was starstruck after meeting fellow Swedish legend, Agnetha Fältskog from ABBA

Metal Hammer

"Most of my favourite bands, their fourteenth album was shit": Opeth's Mikael Åkerfeldt on ABBA, nearly buying a record shop, and their awesome 14th album

When ABBA-mad Opeth leader Mikael Åkerfeldt met one of their singers, he “lost it”. She didn’t sing on their new concept album, but some other, perhaps unlikely, big names did

Louder

“We did ask him… he replied, ‘You can’t afford me!’” Steven Wilson didn’t work on Opeth’s new album, but Ian Anderson did – while fans are still processing the return of growl vocals after 16 years

Mikael Åkerfeldt and guitarist Fredrik Åkesson regret that people focus so much on one element of their sound, when there’s so much more to The Last Will And Testament

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