Mastermind. Visionary. Trailblazer. Just a taste of the descriptions Opeth leader Mikael Åkerfeldt will see any time he Googles his name. It’s entirely warranted too, when you take into consideration the fearless ambition, ferocious intelligence and majestic flair at the heart of progressive metal landmark albums like Blackwater Park – which celebrates its 25th anniversary and silver certification this month.

With sprawling 10-minute-plus symphonies like The Leper Affinity, The Drapery Falls and its concluding title track, it’s the kind of record stacked with enough mold-shattering detours for most bands to happily make a career out of.

But the Stockholm-based singer-songwriter has no reason to be precious, given that he seemingly sits on a mountain of gold-standard concepts that uncover a common thread between the death metal brutality of Morbid Angel, the heavy prog of King Crimson and the folky brilliance of Nick Drake.

Perhaps what makes these labyrinthine and bewildering overtures even more astonishing is the fact that he made a lot of them up on the spot, having turned up to Studio Fredman in Gothenburg during the summer of 2000 armed with a handful of rough sketches.

“That’s how we did it in those days,” Åkerfeldt coolly shrugs, pulling up a chair next to the piano and acoustic guitars in his living room. “Mainly because I didn’t have any means to record at home. When I was writing Still Life, I would demo riffs on a four-track at [Katatonia founder] Anders Nyström’s house to help remember the ideas.

“Then just before Blackwater Park, I had another friend who had gotten an early version of Cubase, so I’d program some basic drums. I made demos of Harvest, The Drapery Falls, Bleak and the title track; but they were far from finished.”

He says the final recordings ended up sounding “completely different,” with many ideas and sections – and in some cases, entire tracks – casually made up on the spot. If it felt good enough, the band would move on. With no outside feedback until producer Steven Wilson got involved later down the line, they had no way of knowing whether they’d struck gold.

In the end, it worked out for the best, proving Åkerfeldt was right to stick to his guns. “I guess I’m lucky when it comes to the instincts I tend to follow, because more often than not they’re spot-on,” he says.

Is it true you were robbed at knifepoint just before heading into the studio?

We were rehearsing in a rough neighborhood. We didn’t even own amps at this point. Peter and I were getting the subway back early in the morning. This guy came up to us, sat down next to me and put a knife against my groin – down there.

“He was clearly on something and asking for money. He started going through our stuff. We could have tried taking him down, but with a knife to my groin I was petrified. When he got off the subway he went for my guitar, and I shouted, “Fuck, no!” There was a bit of a struggle.

Was it the black PRS CE24 that you ended up using on the album?

It must have been. That was my main guitar around then. Not an instrument you’d want stolen! The weirdest thing was he said he played the accordion and tried to be nice while he was robbing us – as if to say, “I’m a musician, too!”

You loaded almost every track on Blackwater Park with a wealth of ideas. The title song is watertight as far as world-beating extreme metal heaviness goes.

It has some cool riffs! It’s a bit droney, because it sticks to the same dropped D key. It’s quite punishing to play, even more so for the drummer because half the song has double bass drums. I got a bit lazy with the songwriting for the second half. I wish I’d experimented more to make it less predictable.

But lots of people love that track. Some of it’s a bit meat-and-potatoes metal compared to the other tracks, which ebb and flow. I’m proud of the spacey bit in the middle; it came out pretty cool and odd. I remember thinking of songs like Oh Well by Fleetwood Mac when I wrote the acoustic sections.

Speaking of acoustics, you unveiled your new Martin OM series signature acoustic last year.

I’m the first Swedish musician to have a Martin signature. I have number one right here next to me. I used to work in a guitar shop selling Martin guitars, so it was a huge full-circle moment, particularly for the younger me who had nothing going for him!

Fast-forward 30 years, I’m walking through the factory in Nazareth with the CEO asking me if I wanted a signature. I don’t deserve a signature model of anything, to be honest! But I’ve been doing this music for a long time and we have a fanbase that loves the odd type of shit we do, so I can understand why it made sense.

What made you choose the OM series in particular?

I prefer recording with smaller guitars. Jumbos and dreadnoughts can be harder because the bass is boomy. What I love about the orchestral models is that you can just stick a mic in front and nothing needs to be EQ’d. They have this top-mid that cuts through, which is helpful when you have shitloads going on, like in our music.

For that reason, I prefer how they ring. They also sit easier in your lap. I wanted something with a big sound if you’re sat around a campfire, which is the kind of thing I might do. I’m still happy to play larger acoustics at home, though.

You played some pretty legendary guitars at the Martin museum, including the haunted Grandpa 1953 Martin D-18 that belonged to Kurt Cobain.

There were guitars in glass cabinets, and any time I’d ask, “What’s that?” they’d ask me if I wanted to try it, and then hand over one of these priceless guitars. I’d be sat there saying, ‘Oh my God, take it away from me!’

Some of them belonged to important musicians like Kurt Cobain, Johnny Cash or Joan Baez. It was amazing to see all these artifacts. There was a ’40s D-18 that belonged to Hank Williams – It was so light, it felt like a helium balloon. It sounded so good. On the other hand, Kurt Cobain’s guitar didn’t sound good, feel good or look good!

Nirvana aren’t really a band people tend to associate you with.

I love Nirvana! I remember listening to the song Polly a lot because “I think I should get off her first” is a misheard lyric here in Sweden. You get these hardcore fans who say Nevermind was too polished. People can become a bit elitist when bands get big later on, saying stuff like “Bleach is so much better.” Maybe it’s human nature.

But I would say Nevermind is a great record. It’s the same with Metallica and the Black Album. Some older fans said it was shit because of the success that came with it, but I still love that record. The ’90s had some great music.

You covered Would? by Alice In Chains in 2008.

David Isberg, the guy who originally formed Opeth, came to my house in 1991 with three new albums: Nevermind, the Black Album and Facelift by Alice In Chains. We sat down drinking beer while listening to those pivotal records, and I fell in love with what I heard.

Nirvana became huge and influenced a new generation of guitar players. Yes, they were popular – but that doesn’t mean they weren’t great. And to this day, Alice In Chains are one of the groups I cherish the most out of all the bands in the fucking world. That’s why we covered that song.

Have you ever met them?

They had a dressing room next to us at a festival once, so I got talking to Jerry Cantrell and Mike Inez. I’m such a huge fan of their sound. I would say the world still isn’t ready for how good they actually are. Their music is so out there and weird; it’s almost futuristic, in a way.

They are completely on their own. I haven’t heard any other band that can do it like Alice In Chains. When you break their songs down, it leaves you wondering how they came with those vocal lines over those riffs. They’re easily one of my biggest inspirations from the ’90s.

As for prog guitar heroes, we’ve spoken about David Gilmour, Robert Fripp and Andy Latimer in the past. Is there anyone who you feel doesn’t get enough credit?

Jan Akkerman [ex-Focus] is very underrated. If you asked David Gilmour if he knew who Jan was, he’d probably say, “Yeah, – he’s my idol!” A lot of these well-known players were glancing at what Jan was doing back in the ’70s. I know for a fact that Andy Latimer looked up to him, not only as a guitarist but also as a member of Focus.

Jan is quite widdly on his Black Beauty Les Paul. But he’s also a great acoustic player with this right hand technique that resembles a flamenco player. I tried to do that myself and could never get it right!

He also knows when to sit back and play melodic lines nice and slow. He didn’t fight the other players in the band and shared the spotlight with their keyboard player Thijs Van Leer, who is another genius. Focus deserve more credit in general, I would say.

• Opeth’s Blackwater Park 25th anniversary reissue is out now via Music For Nations.

Despite his superlative musical output with Opeth and beyond, Mikael Åkerfeldt doesn’t like receiving praise. But he’s happy to dish it out – and there’s one player that he believes doesn’t get their flowers.

When ‘prog guitar greats’ becomes a topic of conversation, there are obvious contenders. There's David Gilmour and his slow, thoughtful guitar solos for one, Robert Fripp for his angular ingenuity, another. Honorable mentions, meanwhile, go to Messrs Martin Barre, Adrian Belew, and, in modern realms, Plini and Tosin Abasi, too. So, who does he feel doesn’t get the praise they deserve?

“Jan Akkerman is very underrated,” he tells Guitar World. “If you asked David Gilmour if he knew who Jan was, he’d probably say, ‘Yeah, he’s my idol!’”

Known for his time on Dutch group Focus, and in particular for Hocus Pocus, which he co-wrote with keyboardist, flutist and vocalist Thijs van Leer, Akkerman has more than left his mark on the prog scene.

Hocus Pocus, recorded with a late ’60s Les Paul Custom plugged into a Fender SS1000/XFL1000 Super Showman, is one of the genre’s most successful and endearing tracks – especially away from the big-name artists. In fact, he inspired many of them.

“A lot of these well-known players were glancing at what Jan was doing back in the ’70s,” Åkerfeldt attests. “I know for a fact that [Camel guitarist] Andy Latimer looked up to him, not only as a guitarist but also as a member of Focus.

“Jan is quite widdly on his Black Beauty Les Paul. But he’s also a great acoustic player with this right-hand technique that resembles a flamenco player,” he continues. “He also knows when to sit back and play melodic lines nice and slow.

“He didn’t fight the other players in the band and shared the spotlight with Thijs Van Leer, who is another genius. Focus deserves more credit in general, I would say.”

Akkerman also has a fan in Vernon Reid, though he names a Strat wielder as guitar’s great unsung hero.

Åkerfeldt launched a signature acoustic guitar with Martin last year, having described the Martin museum as the “Holy Land,” but says one supposedly special guitar on display there left him cold.

Guitar World’s new chat with the Opeth riffsmith will be published in full later this month.

Last year, Swedish metal guitar hero Mikael Åkerfeldt – along with his Opeth bandmate, Fredrik Åkesson – visited the Martin Museum in Nazareth, Pennsylvania.

Much to their delight – Åkerfeldt went so far as to call the museum “the Holy Land” – the two guitarists were given free rein to take even the museum's most valuable acoustic guitars for a spin.

Though he wasn't particularly impressed by the Kurt Cobain-owned 1953 D-18 that the Nirvana frontman affectionally called “Grandpa” (not to be confused with the $6 million D-18E Cobain used for Nirvana's legendary MTV Unplugged performance), there was one 19th century model that was so pristine Åkerfeldt was scared to play it.

Never mind all that, though.

Today (September 26), at the Guitar Summit in Mannheim, Germany, Martin unveiled the OM Mikael Åkerfeldt, a luxurious, limited-edition stunner of a signature guitar. Those historic models Åkerfeldt tried that day, he says, pale in comparison to his and Martin's new creation.

“Is this the best guitar I've ever played? Including the ones in your museum? I believe so,” he said in a press release. “It just sings – the resonance, the clarity, the low end. Everything about it feels magnificent.”

Luckily for us, our very own Matt Owen happens to be at the Guitar Summit, and stopped by Martin's booth to snap some up-close pictures of the new model.

The new acoustic is all luxury from top to bottom: a torrefied spruce top with a Guatemalan rosewood back, an East Indian rosewood wedge, European flamed maple binding, and a herringbone trim.

The fingerboard is ebony, there are Liquidmetal bridge pins, and, man, peep those mother-of-pearl Roman numeral inlays.

Moving to the interior, one finds VTS-treated spruce and Golden Era scalloped X-bracing, a lá Martin's Modern Deluxe Series.

But the guitar's calling card is its speed-friendly Low Profile Velocity neck, which marks the first time the modern-minded neck – found on the company's much-lauded SC line – has been fitted onto a traditional Martin body. There's where the metal comes into play, eh?

In commemoration of Åkerfeldt's year of birth, 1974, the OM Mikael Åkerfeldt Signature will be limited to a run of 74 models worldwide, with each coming with a laser-etched stainless-steel label and custom Harptone case. It rings up at $6,999.

For more info on the guitar, visit Martin.

The masters of modern progressive rock are without a doubt Opeth, the Swedish quintet whose fourteenth studio album The Last Will and Testament has been acclaimed in recent months.

Bassist Martín Méndez reveals a typically unpredictable selection of albums that made him the man he is today. His influences are many and varied, among them the likes of Queen, Stanley Clarke, Joni Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix and Jaco Pastorius.

“Jaco has always been the main influence when it comes to the more dissonant side of my playing,” Méndez told Bass Player. “That music has inspired me a lot, even though it might not be obvious on the albums.”

“There’s this sense of melancholy in the recordings made by people like him, Miles Davis and John Coltrane. I pay a lot of attention to the bass register on those albums – those musicians ended up affecting how I approach my riffs.”

So what five albums does Méndez chart among those that shaped his bass style?

1. Black Sabbath – Master Of Reality (1971)

“I suppose I’m in a metal band, so I should put at least one metal album in here! It’s generally difficult to hear the bass playing in metal, because it’s usually hidden behind the guitars, but some bass players like Geezer Butler stand out because they try to do something different with their parts. If they don’t do that, I usually find it a bit boring. This was a huge album for me when I was younger.”

2. Return To Forever – Return To Forever (1972)

“Stanley Clarke was another huge influence on me. I'm a fingerstyle player too, although l've never tried to play like him. l've never managed to play with a pick – but l don't bend my arm like he does.

“He's the man. I've actually started to play upright bass with Opeth, like Clarke does: I played it on Heritage.”

3. Stevie Wonder – Innervisions (1973)

“I got into this album when I joined Opeth. It was Mikael Äkerfeldt who showed it to me. I don't know who the bass player is but whoever he is, he was amazing.

“The song Visions is my favorite [featuring upright great Malcolm Cecil], although I really love all the songs on it. I like funk playing, but it needs to be groovy for me. I don't like it if it's too happy!”

4. Jaco Pastorius – Jaco Pastorius (1976)

“It’s funny – when I was really young I hated this album. I didn’t understand it. Ever since then, though, I’ve thought it was tremendous.

“I play fretless bass and I know a couple of songs of Jaco, but I would never compare myself with him. He was the ultimate bass player for me – his basslines were amazing and I loved the way he created melodies and used such incredible techniques.”

5. Astor Piazzolla – Tango: Zero Hour (1986)

“This guy was a major tango player from Italy, but his tango was completely different. I loved all his albums, but this one was the first that I heard.

“Again, I don’t know who the bass player was on this record [Hector Console], but it wasn’t just about the bass playing: it was all about the entire composition. Piazzolla wrote parts for the upright bass that were very unusual – they were very percussive at times.”

Guitars used by Kurt Cobain have been deemed by the vintage guitar market to be quite the commodity.

The two most expensive guitars ever sold at auction both belonged to the late Nirvana frontman – the Mustang he used in the Smells Like Teen Spirit video sold for $4.55 million in 2022, and the Martin D-18E he used for Nirvana's legendary MTV Unplugged performance sold for $6 million in 2020.

One Cobain guitar that's not for sale, however, is the 1953 D-18 acoustic he affectionately referred to as “Grandpa.” Given to Cobain by singer/songwriter Mary Lou Lord, the D-18 now sits in the Martin Museum in Nazareth, Pennsylvania.

A few months ago, Mikael Åkerfeldt and Fredrik Åkesson, guitarists for Swedish metal perennials Opeth, stopped by the Martin Museum, and were given, much to their delight (the former called it “the Holy Land”) free rein to take even the museum's most valuable acoustic guitars for test drives.

Though Åkerfeldt was left in awe by a 19th century acoustic he got to play – “I got scared,” he told Revolver in a recent interview – he was decidedly less moved by Cobain's D-18.

“It was very beat up,” Åkerfeldt told Revolver. “It didn’t feel that good. There was nothing special about it, other than it had belonged to Kurt.”

Åkerfeldt also shrugged off the spooky lore that apparently comes with the instrument.

“Someone told us that guitar was haunted, like people who had that guitar had accidents,” he said. “I’m a Nirvana fan, but it was just a regular guitar to me.”

According to Martin, Cobain received the “Grandpa” D-18 shortly before the release of Nirvana's history-making Nevermind album.

It would be another two years before he purchased the oddball, already-rare Martin D-18E that would later become the most expensive guitar ever sold.

According to Nirvana guitar tech Earnie Bailey, Cobain was largely nonchalant about the value, age, and such of guitars, viewing them primarily as tools.

“I don’t believe he had any idea how rare it was before he bought [the D-18E],” Bailey told Guitar World in 1995.

“Kurt was neither a collector nor a connoisseur of rare guitars. I think he saw it as an oddity, hoping it would sound as good as it looked.”

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.

For the most part, however, the Swedish quintet were deeply admired for daring to march to the beat of their own drum, resulting in the breathtaking sounds heard on the three albums that followed.

Deep-diving into the ethereal unknown, converging elements of blues, jazz, and classical in ways no group had ever dared, these cinematic and progressive orchestrations would twist and turn in the most delightful of ways, cementing their stature as world-class innovators and true masters of their own destiny.

But Mr. Åkerfeldt, as we’ve grown to learn, can be a tad unpredictable, to say the least. In August of this year, when Opeth dropped the first track from their new album, The Last Will And Testament – a track with the enigmatic title §1 – fans were amazed to discover that the guttural roars and blastbeats of old had returned.

Why? And why now? As Åkerfeldt tells it, this was always going to happen, but only ever on his terms, and when the time felt right…

It’s a late-summer afternoon in London when Åkerfeldt and the band’s lead guitarist, Fredrik Åkesson, meet with TG in the downstairs bar of the Sanctum Hotel in London, a place affiliated with Iron Maiden. Naturally, the pair are also enjoying pints of Maiden-branded Trooper IPA as they discuss the making of The Last Will And Testament.

It’s a concept album built around the narrative of a wealthy man’s will revealing dark family secrets. Every track but one is titled with a section symbol representing paragraphs of the will. And as Åkerfeldt explains, that lead track, §1, is what set the tone for the whole piece, both conceptually and musically.

“The first song I wrote was §1, but I actually didn’t like it at first,” he admits. “It had some of those death metal connotations which reminded me of Morbid Angel, but I stopped halfway because I felt like an imposter. I let it sit for a while and started writing what would become §7, which had more death metal vocals.

“I started to feel like there was a purpose to it all, especially with the concept brewing. It sounded good, strong, and relevant – a combination of the old with new ideas we hadn’t explored before. I didn’t feel embarrassed, I felt cool! Then I went back to §1, which quickly became one of my favorite songs. It’s short, hard-hitting, and innovative while also being evil!

“It reminded me of how I screamed in the olden days. I would be in the studio clenching my fists to the point where I was bleeding from the nails sticking into my flesh! I felt that thing. It’s hard to describe, but I guess it’s that old death metal magic!”

He makes a valid point. §1 is condensed and succinct – perhaps unusual for a band associated with sprawling 10-minute-plus masterpieces that never seem to run out of creative steam.

From the simplistic chorus riff that nods to Sepultura in their heyday (“I love stupid riffs because they’re easy to play!” Åkerfeldt grins) to the dizzyingly chromatic tapped solo from Åkesson, it’s the kind of song that goes straight for the jugular.

“That idea was developed out of something Mike did on the demo,” Åkesson says. “There was a weird trill in there, which gave me the inspiration for a spidery kind of lick with an evil sound. I added some more tapping into it, while hammering on from nowhere on the B-string, then moving the same pattern a step down.

”I used a Burny guitar, a black Les Paul copy, with a Fernandes sustainer which helped the top notes ring out. It was actually an old Neal Schon signature that I found from a dealer in Stockholm.”

Given his reputation as a gear hound and self-confessed guitar addict, the list of equipment used by Åkesson on the recordings is extensive indeed.

Åkerfeldt, however, has always been more minimalist in that regard, but that didn’t stop him from trying out something completely different for his latest opus. He’s been seen playing PRS guitars, as well as Les Pauls and Strats on stage in the past, but never a Telecaster…

“I only brought one guitar along,” he shrugs. “All my parts were recorded using a Telecaster Custom from the ’90s, with a humbucker in the neck and single-coil in the bridge. No one’s seen me with a Tele before. I wouldn’t normally be caught dead with one because I think they’re fucking ugly! But that’s the only guitar I used.

“It doesn’t hum when you raise the gain. Nobody knows this, but I actually used it on the [Netflix series] Clark soundtrack, but never with Opeth. I love the feel of that Tele, it’s so comfortable I didn’t feel the need to bring anything else. I also knew if it didn’t work, Fredrik would have a bunch of shit for me to try.”

Åkesson’s weapon of choice for the rhythms was his prized 1970 Strat acquired from John Norum, the Europe guitarist who mentored him early on and remains one of his closest friends.

It was plugged into one of two Friedmans (“a BE-100 Deluxe and an old one that Dave Friedman probably soldered himself”) as well as a newly acquired Marshall Studio Vintage head and cab for the cleans. And that was just for the riffing…

“For the leads, I plugged into a Marshall Plexi from 1972, the year I was born, with an old Boss OD-1 from 1980 in front. It has an old chip, so there’s some ancient magic there. Later on, I found one from 1978 in Japan which has the original 14-pin quad op amp [RC3403D] chip.

“I would go into the bass side of the Marshall and roll off most of the low end. I think it’s the same approach Jake E. Lee used on [the Ozzy Osbourne album] Bark At The Moon, as well as Gary Moore on Corridors Of Power. There’s something about the mids that cuts through.”

“And we shouldn’t forget about the cabinet!” Åkerfeldt interjects. “A local engineer found an old Marshall from the 60s. It had probably never been serviced! I asked the Rockfield Studios owner if one of my favorite English prog bands, Spring, used that cab on the one album they recorded. And he said they definitely did. It sounded fuckin’ awesome. It was old, beat-up, and looked like somebody had taken a dump on it, but the tone was amazing.”

Another secret weapon came in the form of the AmpRx BrownBox, used to attenuate the power running into the heads. The old Plexis were made for 220V, explains Åkerfeldt, while modern sockets in the UK and Europe often run at 240V, which will obviously affect the end result.

The BrownBox can therefore remedy this, he notes, and take the voltage down even further, if so required.

“It’s not a new concept by any means, but we found it took a lot of the annoying bright frequencies away,” Åkesson says, noting how Eddie Van Halen would bring his American power down to 90V with a Variac to achieve what is often lovingly referred to as ‘the brown sound.’

“The only bad thing is that turning down is not very metal!” Åkerfeldt laughs. “AC/DC famously wrote High Voltage… well, our version is more like Correct Voltage!”

But whatever the voltage, it should come as no surprise that there’s no shortage of big guitar moments on The Last Will And Testament. Perhaps it’s Åkesson’s lead work on closing track A Story Never Told that showcases the guitarist at his most melodically enthralling – helping narrate the story behind the music one note at a time.

In similar ways to his Lovelorn Crime solo on Opeth’s previous full-length, In Cauda Venenum, it’s a long-form statement that hits in all the right places thanks to its well-considered balance of choice notes, expressive vibrato, and striking sense of lyricism.

Its composition took quite a bit of time, Åkesson admits, but the luxury of writing and demoing at his own home studio gave him the creative freedom required to come up with something extra special, using trial and error to find the right contrast of feel, sophistication, and technical wizardry.

“I knew it needed a unique melody to start with,” he says. “Then towards the end I borrowed some of Mikael’s vocal melodies to close it all up. I was going for a combination of Ritchie Blackmore and David Gilmour. The solo from Rainbow’s Snowman was a loose inspiration there, just in terms of vibe. I’m very happy with how it came out.”

“There’s one note in there that just kills everything else,” Åkerfeldt says. “It’s so strong that the rest of the music goes down in favor of that note. I wondered if we did something in the mix, but no, it just overpowers the rest of the music. People keep telling me how beautiful the solo is and I thank them to steal credit!”

Other notable leads include Åkerfeldt’s tear-jerking blues at the end of §6 – nodding to old school greats like Eric Clapton and Peter Green – Åkesson’s contributions to §5 – which features some screaming wah leads using dominant ideas – and the mid-section of §6, which effectively serves as a tribute to neoclassical maestro and fellow Swede Yngwie Malmsteen.

“That solo comes after a keyboard section, so I figured, ‘why not?’” grins Åkesson, who has also been working closely with Ghost on their latest releases, and previously handled the fretwork in bands like Arch Enemy, Krux, and Talisman.

“After a Moog solo, I had to do a homage to Yngwie. He was a huge influence on me growing up and I still really love those early albums. Everybody in my neighborhood was trying to keep up with him. I wrote this solo the quickest and improvised, what we kept was close to the first take. I wouldn’t say the licks are directly from him, but it’s me playing in that fast style…

“As for §5, that one took a while to write. I couldn’t just go for it because of the chords underneath. I had to put some thought into the modes. It was partly inspired by an Indian player on Instagram called Guitar Prasanna [Ramaswamy], who does all these quick slides. I was jumping between a more happy sound and then something darker.

“I like the sound of dominant, diminished, and minor7flat5 arpeggios – they’re all kinda related to each other, so you can come up with some interesting ideas by mixing things together.”

And while we’re on the subject of interesting ideas, it would be fair to say that Mikael Åkerfeldt is an expert in this field. He has in the past been critical of metal bands who follow trends and stick to tried-and-tested formulas, resulting in recordings that can feel uninspired, sterile, or mundane.

It’s almost too easy for bands to end up sounding the same, he rightly points out. So, as a parting gift to TG, what advice can the progressive metal polymath offer us to help stand out from the crowd, as he himself has done so poetically time and time again?

“My best advice is: real musicians don’t take advice!” he deadpans, half-jokingly. “If you like playing straightforward metal, then sure, that’s what you should do. But if you are open to things, you should try them. It might result in ideas that are less generic.

“I don’t necessarily think our way of working is a good recipe for success. When you start doing weird shit, that’s a starting point for trouble between the writer, the other members, the fans, and even the labels. Don’t forget why you started a band in the first place.”

Opeth, however, are no ordinary band, and even if you go all the way back to their 1995 debut, Orchid, written and recorded when Åkerfeldt was just 20 years old, it’s clear they’ve always been an anomaly to the metal scene around them. And proudly so…

“We were kinda special when we started, writing long songs with shitloads of stuff happening,” he says with pride. “We never had to make the transition from normal to weird – we were already there! I dare anyone to say our debut sounded like anything else, because nothing like that existed in 1994. If you want to break away from the mundane, listen to different kinds of music and don’t rule anything out.

“I don’t have a pre-set idea of how I want to sound. It changes. Something can set you off. You play the wrong chord and suddenly a new world opens up, like Pink Floyd did with Shine On You Crazy Diamond. Your fingers might be in the wrong place, but the accident can sound amazing. Ultimately, you might not have intended it, but you should be open to running with it.”

• The Last Will And Testament will be released on November 22 via Reigning Phoenix.

Opeth visionary and Swedish prog-metal legend Mikael Åkerfeldt has been seen with various guitars throughout his 30-plus-year career.

From PRS models to Les Pauls, SGs, Flying Vs, Strats, and yes, even a B.C. Rich Mockingbird, Åkerfeldt's sizeable collection has so far excluded one staple model: the Telecaster. However, this all changed with Opeth's upcoming album, The Last Will and Testament, where Åkerfeldt used only one guitar for the entire recording.

“All my parts were recorded using a Telecaster Custom from the ’90s, with a humbucker in the neck and single-coil in the bridge,” Åkerfeldt reveals in the final issue of Total Guitar.

“No-one’s seen me with a Tele before. I wouldn’t normally be caught dead with one because I think they’re fucking ugly! But that’s the only guitar I used. It doesn’t hum when you raise the gain.”

The guitarist explains that he actually used this same Tele when recording the original score for the 2022 Swedish Netflix series Clark, directed by Jonas Åkerlund – known for his work on Queens of the Stone Age, Blondie, Lady Gaga, Lenny Kravitz, and Ozzy Osbourne music videos. However, this is the first time he’s ever used the Fender solidbody on any Opeth material.

“I love the feel of that Tele; it’s so comfortable I didn’t feel the need to bring anything else. I also knew if it didn’t work, Fredrik [Åkesson, fellow guitarist] would have a bunch of shit for me to try.”

Another secret weapon came in the form of a beat-up '60s Marshall cabinet, which Åkerfeldt quips has “probably never been serviced”.

“I asked the Rockfield Studios owner if one of my favorite English prog bands, Spring, used that cab on the one album they recorded. And he said they definitely did. It sounded fuckin’ awesome.”

According to the Opeth founder, it “looked like somebody had taken a dump on it”, but the tone was unparalleled and played a pivotal role in shaping the prog behemoths' 14th studio album.

The Last Will and Testament is released on 22 November 2024 through Reigning Phoenix Music.

As the creative visionary in Opeth, the Swedish band who started out making atmospheric death metal before moving further into the realms of progressive rock, Mikael Åkerfeldt knows a thing or two about embracing evolution and daring to dream. 

Much like Black Sabbath legend Tony Iommi, he’s guided his band through a smorgasbord of genres and sounds, away from their heavier roots and deep into the kaleidoscopic cosmic beyond…

When we think of SG-wielding guitar gods, it’s usually either Tony Iommi or Angus Young who come to mind first.

“For me, it’s always Tony first. Then there’s Angus, Mick Box from Uriah Heep who used one for a while, and Jimmy Page with the double-neck. There’s even a famous picture of Jimi Hendrix using a white SG with a vibrola. That’s actually one of my dream guitars – a white SG Les Paul Custom with the three PAFs – but I can’t really afford one! 

“I do, however, have two SGs in my collection. One is from 1965 with P-90s and the other is a 1961 reissue. You could say buying those guitars was inspired by Tony! Honestly, without those classic Sabbath records, maybe I wouldn’t have been a musician.”

While he’s generally thought of as the inventor of heavy metal, there’s a lot more to Tony Iommi than just heavy riffs…

“Everyone who likes hard rock and metal has to love Sabbath. You could have a one-page advert of Tony in any metal magazine saying, ‘He’s the best’, and that would be correct. But you’re right – people might think his playing is all about the big riffs, which is certainly a part of it. But I always loved his jazzy playing – listen to Planet Caravan. 

“You can definitely hear a lot of passing tones, and one of his influences was Joe Pass. Maybe it was a Freudian thing! I also love the jazziness of his acoustic playing in Symptom Of The Universe. That stuff is really special to me, as are the weird Mediaeval instrumentals like Embryo and Orchid.”

They could be very psychedelic and experimental, especially by the time they got Sabbath Bloody Sabbath in 1973…

“I love that album – the final track Spiral Architect could very well be my favorite Sabbath song. It’s very melodic and beautiful. It’s not really riffy, except for that little bluesy bit, with a lot of strings. 

“That record has a lot of cool riffs but it’s more of a musical journey than the first four. And the main riff from the title track must have felt super heavy for its time. It’s almost like a death metal riff. So sure, it was heavy at points, but it was mainly just really well-written, exciting music because he started introducing all these odd chord changes. 

“There were other bands making heavy music around then, but Iommi took over the world with it. It’s well-documented that Tony had a writer’s block before Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. He got out of it by going more progressive and fucking with his own boundaries.”

Maybe similar things could be said of Opeth’s transition from the death metal of Watershed to the jazz-rock of Heritage?

“I learned a lot of that from Tony, maybe even more than I’m willing to admit. Sabbath were trying new things on Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Sabotage and Technical Ecstasy. They are strange records, and I can definitely relate to that!”

And, like Tony, you’ve assumed the role of creative leader in your band…

“Tony helmed those recordings. Somebody in that band had to step up and be the creative one, essentially working as a producer. It made sense that it was Tony, because he wrote a lot of those songs. He was the creative guy. 

“There was no competition – he was the man when it came to writing all that music. I know how that feels – once you sit in that producer’s chair, it’s down to you to decide where the music goes. I guess I can relate to the excitement of taking control.”

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.

But even the band themselves would admit that 2003’s Damnation album – a 43-minute love letter to their vintage progressive rock influences – was something they never quite saw in their own destiny. After breaking out of the underground and making their mark internationally with the Steven Wilson-produced Blackwater Park in 2001, the Stockholm-based quartet now had the world’s attention. 

For singer/guitarist and mastermind Mikael Åkerfeldt, who had undertaken the role of writing virtually all of the music early on, it was now time for his band to really spread their creative wings in the form of two records – the extreme brutality of Deliverance and its calmer companion, Damnation, released six months later. 

So when exactly did he realize his metal band was going to start working on music that would had little to do with the guttural roars and blastbeat fury they were typically associated with, and did he ever consider releasing Damnation as another project entirely?

“I definitely wanted it to be an Opeth record,” says Åkerfeldt, talking to GW via video conference from his living room on a chilly day in Stockholm. “Before Blackwater Park it didn’t feel like that much was happening around the band. We were active but we didn’t tour or have much going for us. Suddenly that all changed. We became aware of the fact that people knew who we were. I had this idea of doing two records, one heavy and the other more ballady and calm… 

“I’d always wanted to make a more chilled-out album, but at the same time had never envisioned it actually happening. So I pitched the idea for releasing both together, and the answer from our label at the time was no. I asked for some adjustments to our contract – an additional sheet of paper that said we’d make both for the price of one, counting as a single album. 

“That’s how much I wanted to do it! And, of course, then they said yes. It’s a terrible idea for a band to do that, playing into the hands of the label, giving them an extra release for nothing – and they insisted on separate release dates – but that’s how we got the green light.”

For Blackwater Park you mainly used a black PRS CE24 that you’d bought from Katatonia guitarist Anders Nyström, as well as a Seagull acoustic guitar. What do you remember about the gear in the studio for Damnation?

“Not much! [Laughs] I’d recently gotten a Martin acoustic. It was a 000-16GT, the GT standing for Gloss Top. It was actually a guitar player from Nevermore, Curran Murphy, who sold it to me. I think he worked in a guitar shop. 

“When we toured together on the Blackwater Park cycle, he told me he could hook me up with a nice Martin on a good deal. So I got it through him, and it ended up being one of the main instruments for the record. 

“I had my first two PRS guitars, which I was very happy with. And even though I wanted an old-school kinda sound, I didn’t really feel the need to get vintage gear. Most of the electric guitars were recorded with my blue Custom 24 from the late ’80s.”

That would have been your second PRS guitar – the first being the black CE24, correct?

“Yeah, it was the second PRS I ever owned and one I’ve used a lot in Opeth. It’s a really good guitar that had been modified. There was originally a turn knob with the five pickup settings, which allowed you to split the humbuckers. 

“It was a really good idea, except that you couldn’t really get hold of it properly when you were on stage. I had the same problem with my first PRS and needed to put black skateboard tape to get traction around the switch. 

“The blue one had been modified to a regular three-way toggle switch, and that was my main guitar for both Deliverance and Damnation. [Former Opeth guitarist] Peter Lindgren had his 1973 Gibson Les Paul Custom, from the year he was born. It was a really good guitar, though the frets were worn and the neck had been broken at some point. I can’t remember if there was anything else. 

“Usually I borrow some extra guitars from my friends, but since we had a couple of PRS guitars and Peter’s Les Paul, that was all we needed for those records. I brought the black CE24 to the studio, but I can’t remember using it much.”

What can you tell us about the amps heard on the recordings?

“Fredrik Nordström, who owned Studio Fredman, had a Fender Twin that we used for most of the clean tones. We even brought that along to the second studio, as we had to record a lot of things elsewhere. 

“He had also had an Engl amp and a 5150, which is what most bands would have used when recording there, but for Damnation it was mainly the Twin. I think we might have used some of Steven Wilson’s plugins too.”

The opening track Windowpane is the one you’ve played live the most. There’s a certain dreaminess to the ninth chord from the intro riff.

“I actually learned about ninth chords from Stevie Wonder, particularly the song Visions from the 1973 album Innervisions. That song starts with those kinds of chords. I remember when I first heard it, I thought, ‘That’s a beautiful chord; it sounds special – so I’ll nick that at some point!’”

The first solo, in the key of F# Dorian, feels like a nod to Andy Latimer from ’70s progressive rock group Camel.

“I don’t improvise much so I definitely sat down to write the solo. For both records, when it came to leads, I didn’t have much of an idea before going into the studio. There was no demoing. I guess I just sat down and played. We usually set aside a day or two for solos, because they are usually written right there. 

“Whatever I played on the record is what I thought sounded nice. And you’re right – Andy Latimer was one of my idols at the time, and still is. It’s a sound I almost tried to copy. I wanted to sound as close to him as I could. I think the end result was quite interesting.

“One thing I noticed while practicing that song for our last tour was that the guitar tone is very dry, much drier than I remember it. When I think of that solo, I imagine a nice spring reverb or delay or something – but it’s dry and not as warm-sounding as I remember. 

“Steven Wilson was there for a lot of the lead guitars. He always seemed to like my guitar playing and say things like, ‘That’s beautiful, that’s awesome, let’s keep that!’ And I’d be thinking, ‘Really?!’ I think he gave me the confidence I needed. I’ve always loved coming up with things in the studio. I don’t have a problem leaving it to the last minute.”

There’s another riff halfway into the song that, like a lot of these tracks, utilizes open-strings ringing against a motif that jumps around on one string.

“I’ve always felt riffs like that can be a bit hideous. I’ve been thinking about this stuff a lot lately, especially when relearning some of these old songs. For some reason, I used to like sticking to one string for leads and riffs. I’d often choose to play things around the neck instead of right under me. 

“I soon learned I wasn’t being very economical with how I played these parts, especially when I’m playing live and singing. I had to relearn some of these parts and play them in the same position. But it did help with writing some of these parts, like this riff, where I’d stick on one string and leave other strings ringing out to make it sound more colorful and interesting.”

In My Time of Need has a very interesting Am9 voicing, which adds to the ambience.

“It’s definitely an unusual-sounding chord. I play it with a barre across the fifth fret, the seventh fret on the A string, the ninth fret on the D, the G and B barred at the fifth before adding in the eighth fret on the B. That song’s working title was Old Man’s Rock. I wanted a big chorus, and I probably nicked it from somewhere, as I did with Windowpane, actually… that song’s vocal melody line was taken from Grand Theft Auto III, believe it or not! 

“There was a song you could play on the radio within the game and it had a nice vocal line, so I took inspiration from there. With In My Time of Need, I just wanted a singalong type of ballad. I like those simplified songs every now and then, especially as we like to go off on a tangent and do things that are weird with confusing time signatures. 

“My favorite type of music is usually the simple stuff, straightforward songs. My favorite tracks that I’ve written are usually the simpler ones, though I wouldn’t say this is one of my best, funnily enough.”

Closure is one of the album’s more experimental offerings, with its haunting Middle Eastern melodies and frenetic outro.

“I always liked Friends by Led Zeppelin and wanted to do something like that, with the higher D chord against a lower dropped-D drone. So that’s where I got the intro from… Thanks, Jimmy! And he nicked a lot of stuff himself, so I’m allowed to steal from him, right? 

“Usually if I come up with something that sounds like an opening riff, it will set the tone for the rest of the song. Especially if it’s something weird like Closure. It’s not a typical rock ’n’ roll song. I didn’t want to leave that kind of Middle Eastern sound and go into something more regular. The rest of the song had to feel moody and ethereal.”

Hope Leaves – along with Windowpane and 2016’s Will O the Wisp – is one of the very few songs you’ve used a guitar capo on. Was that to make the wide stretches a little easier?

“It was just luck! The use of a capo wasn’t really something I thought about too much. I just stuck it on there for the fun of it. I was lucky in a way, because playing it higher in B instead of A added a fragility to my voice that I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. As you say, I’ve only used a capo on a few Opeth tracks, like Windowpane, Hope Leaves and Will O the Wisp – the first two on the second fret and the latter on the fifth. 

“I guess it did make more sense for Hope Leaves because it’s a wide stretch. When we play it live these days we don’t bother with the capo, though we still have one for Windowpane. I don’t know why – maybe just to make the singing a little easier for me!”

The opening riff from To Rid the Disease is a great example of how you can take an idea and simply move one note one fret at a time to create a lot of tension and dissonance.

“That intro probably came from listening to loads of Queensrÿche when I was younger. It’s a good song, I think. The chorus came from an old song I’d written called Mordet I Grottan with a project called Sörskogen. I thought it was such a good chorus, I had to reuse it. 

“The chord progression itself is pretty standard… but we’d never done anything like this before. We hadn’t done much ‘standard shit’ before Damnation, and I guess I wanted some of that stuff in there. 

“I really like the folky pastoral parts from this song, with all the strummy chords. There’s a moodiness to it all that I really like, which is why it’s one we’ve played live a lot – along with Hope Leaves, Windowpane and In My Time of Need.”

You must be very proud of this album. Some would even say it’s your finest work.

“A lot of people seem to love it. I remember we were actually mixing Deliverance with Andy Sneap when I got the final Damnation mix from Steven Wilson. Me and Peter were in a hotel room in England. We only had one set of headphones and a portable CD player, so we couldn’t listen to it together – it had to be one at a time. 

“I asked if I could go first and he said, ‘Sure, go for it!’ I remember closing my eyes and thinking, ‘Oh, my god!’ It suddenly made me feel so mature. I remember getting the shivers! It was not… death metal. At the time I really loved death metal, and I guess I still do, to some extent. But I was amazed we could do something like that. And though we’ve always been experimental, it made me realize we could progress into genres unknown to us or our fans. 

“Steven’s mix was amazing; I mean, the songs are good, some of them I would consider great, but the mix is perfect. It’s not dated or too retro, it’s just really atmospheric. There was a lot of Mellotron, which I was happy about. I wanted more keyboards and vintage sounds, and the mix brought it all out. I don’t know who else could’ve done justice to those songs. Looking back, I’m very proud of what we achieved.”

“Here’s the pedalboard I’ve been using for the last few Opeth runs. I tend to change my overdrive pedal a lot; right now it’s the Seymour Duncan 805. It has a three-band EQ, which I use for slightly cutting the mids and adding bass.

“The DryBell Vibe Machine has more warmth than other vibes I’ve tried and sounds just like those classic recordings. I also like that you have bright and custom settings, as well as a vibrato mode. I’ll use it for the clean parts of Face of Melinda or Burden and the shreddy fusion solo in Nepenthe.

“This Boss OC-2 is from the mid ’80s. I bought it from Göran Elmquist from Sound of Silence, the local rig builder who looks after Opeth. He’s like the Swedish Bob Bradshaw! The Fuzztner is made by Olsson Amps; it does the octave-up thing – we use it for the ending of Heart in Hand and All Things Will Pass to make the choruses feel more explosive. 

“The MXR Phase 95 sounds brilliant; it’s like the original but has more features so I end up using it a lot for leads. Sometimes I might do the Frank Marino thing: turn it up aggressively with some fuzz and shred through some blues. I love that shit!

“I only use the [TC Electronic] Flashback 2 for what I call ‘psycho effects’ to create oscillating, chaotic sounds at the end of songs, while turning up the fuzz or distortion. The Strymon Volante is handling all my ambiences, thanks to its great spring reverb. It’s hooked up to the switching system via MIDI, so I can preset tempos for certain songs that might need a special delay time. 

“It’s also nice to turn it off whenever I play a fast lick in a solo and then kick it back in on a high note with lots of vibrato. The wah is a [Dunlop] Cry Baby 95Q. And I use the Tiger Lily Tremolo by One Control for the ambient parts in The Drapery Falls. It’s good, but I’ll be switching back to my MXR M305 soon.”

If I had to choose one pedal for a full show

“I recently picked up Joe Bonamassa’s [Way Huge] Penny Saver Royale Modulation & Overdrive. It works nicely for both clean and heavier tones. Normally, I’d pick something like the [Dunlop] Echoplex Delay, but this has quickly become one of my favorite pedals.”

Martín Méndez was just 17 years old when he bought a one-way ticket from his native Uruguay to Sweden in the hope of pursuing a career in heavy metal. 

It was a risky move – he didn’t have any money or know a single word of Swedish, although ultimately the gamble paid off well. 

He would soon end up joining Opeth, the progressive rock pioneers led by singer/guitarist Mikael Åkerfeldt, and now stands, 24 years on from relocating halfway across the world to fulfil his dream, as the group’s second-longest serving member after Åkerfeldt himself.

Edging away from the metallic extremes of their roots, Opeth’s last four albums have seen the quintet embracing cleaner vocals, less distortion and folky psychedelia, with some truly stunning results. 

This creative departure has also given Méndez an opportunity to revisit his death metal influences in White Stones, a new project led by him and named after his hometown in Montevideo, Uruguay – with this year’s second full-length, Dancing Into Oblivion, arriving in quick succession after their debut album, Kuarahy.

“I haven’t had much to do other than sit at home and write,” says Méndez, who initially launched the project in March 2020 only weeks before the world transcended into chaos. Like everyone else, the group’s touring plans were put on hold and their live debut cancelled, leaving the bassist no option but to continue writing. 

“Luckily, I found myself very inspired when the lockdown started,” he calmly reflects. “It was clear we’d all be at home for a while, so I’m glad I took advantage of the situation to focus on more music.”

The eight new tracks are certainly a reminder of Méndez at his most sonically menacing, using some finger-twisting chromaticism and discordance to throw the listener at every turn. 

There are moments that sound like Morbid Angel or Slayer being forced to play though a jazz band’s live rig – with more heaviness coming through the note choices themselves than any kind of pedal or amp distortion.

There’s even a fusion bass odyssey titled Iron Titans, where walking arpeggios lead the band through an avalanche of otherworldly atmospherics.

“I started writing that on bass, which was unusual, because with this band I usually start on guitar,” he notes. “That’s probably why it ended up being so bass-heavy, which is definitely a good thing! You can cut that song into three sections, and I feel like it’s the most progressive song on the album, as well as the longest. It’s one of my favorites we’ve done – the fusion feel makes it really fun to play.”

Those jazz influences have always been evident in Méndez’s work in Opeth, from his tones to his techniques and touches over Åkerfeldt’s mind-bending compositions. While there are moments where the two bands cross over musically, the newer project also offers up its own varying degrees of dissonance.

“Jaco Pastorius has always been the main influence when it comes to that side of my playing,” explains Méndez. “I tend not to think about other players when I’m writing. Of course, the influences are there, though it’s more about trying to find my own voice. I’ve been listening to a lot of John Coltrane over the last year or two. 

“That music has inspired me a lot, even though it might not be obvious on the albums. There’s this sense of melancholy and darkness in the recordings made by people like him and Miles Davis. I pay a lot of attention to the bass register on those albums: Those musicians ended up affecting how I approach my riffs and lines.” 

At the beginning of 2021, it was announced that the bassist had partnered up with Sandberg for his first-ever signature model. Based on their California TT passive bass and available as 34”-scale four-string or 35”-scale five-string, it features an alder body, a hard rock maple neck, an ebony fingerboard and two Delano JMVC pickups. As we suspected, the new instrument can be heard all over the new recordings.

“It was played entirely on my Sandberg basses,” nods Méndez. “I used my white five-string for one song and then my black four-string for the rest of the album. They are incredibly versatile instruments because I can get very aggressive sounds and switch to more jazzy and warm tones that are closer to a Fender Jazz. 

“It’s not that heavy, which is nice for my back, and it plays very comfortably. The Delano JMVC single-coils are quite similar to a Jazz, though the ones I use have a bit more bottom end than the regular ones. That’s down to the position of the pickups, too.”

He adds: “When I visited the factory, they had a bass where you could move the pickups around and choose the exact position you wanted to have them. I was surprised, because I didn’t know that moving things even just half a centimeter would open up a whole new world of sound. 

“The tone would change a lot! That’s when I figured out the setup I wanted, which is with both pickups a bit closer to the bridge. I felt that gave me a nicer clean attack, but lost a little low end, which is how we ended up choosing the right pickups to compensate.”

The Sandberg guitars were then fed into a Darkglass Microtubes 900v2, with nothing in between. As the bassist explains, the amp had more than enough firepower for his needs, which – looking back now, with the gift of hindsight – were a little different this time round. 

“The Darkglass has this distortion I really like,” he confesses. “That’s actually something quite new for me, I usually use a bit of overdrive, but on this album I dialed in a lot more. 

“That was mainly to compensate for the rhythm guitar sound – they’re all quite clean, I used an old Mexican Strat. I needed the bass to be fat and aggressive, and the Darkglass really worked for that. I didn’t need any pedals, like I might with Opeth.”

Perhaps what this project shares most in common with his main band is the usage of passing tones and outside scales, exploring exotic tonalities to their absolute darkest. 

Theory is key, states Méndez, provided you learn how to break the rules as much as adhere to them. Knowing where to use the harmonic minor and melodic minor scales to create tension is fundamental for the kind of music he plays – as is remembering to add your own chromatic twists, he rather poignantly observes.

“I try to think about it from both ways, starting off very much in key and then moving into the outside stuff,” explains the bassist. “I guess I use theory as a guide, but I trust my ears and ideas more than anything else. First of all, you have to believe in the note you are choosing. There has to be that clear intention for it to sound convincing. 

“But you also have to understand why certain notes feel more beautiful or threatening – you need the theory to do that, but eventually you start trusting your ears and breaking away from the books and scales.”

He continues, “For example, I love the sound of harmonic minor – it works really well for those dark, jazzier riffs – but I rarely stick within that kind of framework for the whole song. 

“I like surprising the listener by going outside, using more notes to intensify the atmosphere. I think that’s why a lot of these songs have that extra sense of darkness.”

When we mention that there are a lot of diminished ideas on this latest release, much like every album he’s played on, he flashes us a devilish grin. It’s clearly a sound he’s a fan of, stretching back to his death metal-obsessed teenage years in Uruguay, back to a time when the power of music alone would be enough to convince him to start a new life 8,000 miles away. 

“The diminished scales can feel like the darkest of them all, I would say!” laughs Méndez. “That’s why we metal bands love them the most! Even the whole-tone scale, which is quite hard on the ear, can be useful – maybe not for writing riffs, but definitely for linking passages together. 

“I also grew up on a lot of flamenco and tango,” he continues, “which isn’t typical major-scale stuff. I’m often looking for notes that are fighting each other. Of course, the ‘right’ notes are more pleasing to the ear, but if you want more nervousness and tension in the music, try using them less.” 

• Dancing into Oblivion is out now via Nuclear Blast.

Fredrik Åkesson was initially hired to perform a handful of lead parts on Ghost’s Impera, but the Opeth guitarist quickly ended up tracking all of the guitars on the album, as well as being left in charge of the re-amping. 

He describes the experience as the most intensely layered production he’s ever worked on – likening Tobias Forge and producer Klas Åhlund to one of the greatest producers of them all, Mutt Lange, who famously orchestrated the multi-million selling classic Hysteria with Def Leppard one piece at a time.

A vast amount of gear used was across the 12 tracks on Impera, but the majority of the rhythm tones were created using four guitars, three amps and a handful of pedals. 

As Åkesson tells Total Guitar: “There was an Explorer going through my Olsson Little Hill 100-watt – an amp I helped design and which we used on the last Opeth album – a Strat and a Les Paul through my Friedman BE-100, then a Flying V going through Tobias’ Mesa/Boogie Mark IIC+ with an MLC Vanilla Sky pedal in front.

“There were actually quite a few different Strats with us, like my 1970 model that I bought from John Norum, Tobias’ 70s Strat which you hear during the intro for Call Me Little Sunshine and another mid-80s Fender. We also used the MXR Sugar Drive a lot, which has a Klon-style circuit.”

For the solos, Åkesson took advantage of some late-'50s Marshall Plexis that belonged to the studio, with an old Yngwie Malmsteen favourite in front for extra scream. It’s a classic sound that, to his ears among countless others, has stood the test of time.

“There are a lot of Brian May-style parts on this album, with four-piece harmonies dubbed three times each plus octaves,” he says. “I’d never recorded so many layers of guitars... It was fun!

“For most of the solos I borrowed an old DOD Preamp 250, made in the 70s. It’s the same pedal Yngwie Malmsteen used with his Plexis back in the day on his early albums. It sounded great – such a warm and saturated lead tone!”

• Impera is out now via Loma Vista.

Welcome to Guitar World’s weekly roundup of the musical highlights from the, erm, world of guitar. Every seven days (or thereabouts), we endeavor to bring you a selection of songs from across the guitar universe, all with one thing in common: our favorite instrument plays a starring role.

Red Hot Chili Peppers – The Heavy Wing

What is it? One of the standouts from Unlimited Love, the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ comeback album with John Frusciante, which was released today. Leaning heavily into the guitarist’s prog influences, it’s a brooding rocker with a winding verse chord progression and a tidal wave of a chorus, with lashings of distortion and the returning champ taking lead vocals.

Standout guitar moment: Props to Frusciante for wheeling out the ring modulator for the track’s breakdown, but the highlight has to be the incendiary solo at the four-minute mark, where the guitarist manages to tame the untamable when it comes to that explosive, screaming feedback.

For fans of: John Frusciante, Genesis, King Crimson

– Michael Astley-Brown

Adrian Quesada – Mentiras Con Cariño (feat. iLe)

What is it? The opening cut and lead single from Black Pumas guitarist Adrian Quesada’s new solo album, Boleros Psicodélicos. With beautiful vocals from Calle 13 vocalist iLe, Mentiras Con Cariño is swooning, mysterious and just plain cool, with an absolutely delectable groove. 

Standout guitar moment: Quesada’s only contributes fretwork when it’s necessary, but whenever he does, it’s perfect for the moment. Those mood-setting up-strokes in the verses are disciplined enough to cut steel.

For fans of: Black Pumas, Amy Winehouse, Khruangbin

– Jackson Maxwell

The Amazons – Bloodstream 

What is it? The scorching, speaker-smashing new single from British rockers The Amazons, who are gearing up to release their third studio album, How Will I Know If Heaven Will Find Me? The band have promised an “anthem-packed” installment to their discography, and have already made good on their word with Bloodstream, a four-minute rock romp oozing with delicious guitar tones and arena-filling hooks.

Standout guitar moment: There’s an extended solo/vocal line that crops between the 2:20 and 3:05 mark, which sees the six-string reprise the recurring open-string melody for an augmented ascending lead line that takes the track into its anthemic finale. Very tasty.

For fans of: Blossoms, Royal Blood, The Mysterines

– Matt Owen

Lamb of God – Wake Up Dead (feat. Dave Mustaine)

What is it? A new version of Megadeth’s 1986 cut, Wake Up Dead, with Lamb of God at the helm. It’s faithful to the original – with three jaw-dropping solos and a clutch of slamming guitar riffs – adding a crystal-clear sheen associated with modern production styles.

Standout guitar moment: It’s difficult to choose a winner from the three solos here, but the final one – commencing from the 2:46 mark – has to take the cake, cramming in two-handed tapping, more melodic passages and some rapid-fire ascending runs.

For fans of: Slayer, Testament, Trivium

– Sam Roche

Eric Johnson – Yesterday Meets Today

What is it? The warm, easy-strutting title track from one of the two albums that the Strat master will release simultaneously this summer.  

Standout guitar moment: Man, Johnson just makes everything sound so easy. Listen to the quick-fire solo starting halfway through the track – with his always-immaculate tone, Johnson makes hair-raising feats of fretboard athleticism sound as unhurried and simple as a walk along the beach. 

For fans of: Andy Timmons, Joe Satriani, Toto

– Jackson Maxwell

Justus West – Expectations 

What is it? A new track from hip-hop producer extraordinaire, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Justus West, who strips things back to the bare bones and lets his acoustic guitar and composition skills shine. There’s a fair amount of cinematic production in there, but at its core Expectations is a souped-up acoustic-heavy cut, filled with left-field chord changes and expansive vocals.

Standout guitar moment: There are some neat unexpected changes in Expectations that go against more formulaic progressions, with West’s pinpoint fingerpicking executing his sonic vision in style.

For fans of: Horace Bray, Melanie Faye, Isaiah Sharkey 

– Matt Owen

Memphis May Fire – Only Human (feat. AJ Channer)

What is it? A new single from the Texas metalcore quartet’s upcoming seventh album, Remade in Misery. Featuring guest vocals from Fire From the Gods frontman AJ Channer, Only Human is as explosive as you’d expect from Memphis May Fire, with a crafted blend of destructive breakdowns and melodic singalong passages.

Standout guitar moment: There are no solos here; it’s all about the energy, and the riff that accompanies the breakdown at the 2:22 mark serves as a satisfying and conclusive climax to this metalcore rager.

For fans of: We Came As Romans, Of Mice & Men, Ice Nine Kills

– Sam Roche

Willow – Purge ft. Siiickbrain

What is it? After her pop-punk guitar reawakening last year, Willow Smith has upped the heaviness factor with Purge. Fueled by huge powerchord choruses and palm-muted verse chugs, the new single channels noughties screamo at its peak.

Standout guitar moment: That opening riff instantly takes us back to an era when Linkin Park and Papa Roach ruled the airwaves. It’s a real nostalgia trip.

For fans of: Breaking Benjamin, Disturbed, Papa Roach

– Michael Astley-Brown

Kevin Morby – Rock Bottom

What is it? The second single from singer/songwriter Kevin Morby’s forthcoming album, This Is A Photograph. Catchy and light-hearted, this song works perfectly as both a loose bar-band jam and an uplifting group singalong.

Standout guitar moment: Rock Bottom has one of the best light fuzz tones we’ve heard on record in a long time, but Morby’s solo – which calls back to Mike Bloomfield’s freewheeling and timeless mid-’60s lead guitar work with Bob Dylan in its rolling arpeggios and woozy blues-rock touch – is the perfect exclamation point to this buzzy rocker.  

For fans of: Bob Dylan, The Faces, The War on Drugs

– Jackson Maxwell

Jake Milliner feat. Tane – Did It Yesterday 

What is it? The slinky new track from producer Jake Milliner, who has teamed up with beat connoisseur and guitarist Tane – aka Dotan Bergman – for what is essentially a spontaneous three-minute neo-soul improvisation. It’s tasty turnarounds, jazzy motifs and effortless licks aplenty with Did It Yesterday, which is sure to satisfy your desire for an all-out guitar jam.

Standout guitar moment: It’s hard to pick a standout element from what is essentially an extended four-minute guitar improv, but the outro solo from the 2:30 mark – which follows a sublime section of layered six-strings – is a strong contender, thanks to a wave of intensely chromatic and sophisticated jazz lines.

For fans of: Tom Misch, Charlie Allen, Conor Albert

– Matt Owen

Opeth – Width of a Circle

What is it? A bonus track from the Stockholm prog-metal stalwarts’ latest album, In Cauda Venenum. It’s notably more accessible than much of the band’s catalog, driven by single-note palm-muted chugs in a 4/4 time signature. But it is Opeth after all, so there’s plenty of killer guitar work to appreciate.

Standout guitar moment: Fredrik Åkesson throws the six-string kitchen sink at the solo from the 2:39 mark, packing dizzying sweeps and rapid ascending and descending runs into 40 seconds of shred.

For fans of: Devin Townsend, Gojira, Paradise Lost

– Sam Roche

Swedish prog metal giants Opeth have announced an extended edition of their 2019 album, In Cauda Venenum, sharing an expansive new single, Width of a Circle.

Released – like the rest of In Cauda Venenum – in both English and Swedish, the track is more accessible than much of the band's catalogue, with a mid-tempo groove, 4/4 time signature, catchy vocal hooks and some single-note palm-muted chugs.

But guitarists fear not, there's a nugget or two of six-string ear candy, namely in the form of a 40-second solo from the 2:39 mark, which is full of rapid ascending runs, dizzying sweeps, ultra-fast descending pull-off runs and soaring bends. Check it out below.

Arriving May 13 via the band's own Moderbolaget Records, In Cauda Venenum (Extended Edition) also features two additional tracks beyond Width of a Circle – The Mob and Freedom & Tyranny – and the digipak CD will be accompanied a booklet with new illustrations by American graphic artist Travis Smith.

All three songs were included with the band's In Cauda Venenum (Connoisseur Edition), which was released in November last year on vinyl only – the extended edition of the album marks the digital and CD release of these bonus tracks.

In Cauda Venenum (Extended Edition) is available now for preorder. Head to the band's website for more info.

Opeth are scheduled to head off on the second leg of their co-headline tour with Mastodon in April. The trek will commence April 21 in Montreal, making 16 stops in the US and Canada, before wrapping up May 11 in Riverside, California. See a full list of dates below.

• April 21: Place Bell – Montreal, QC
• April 22: Queen Elizabeth Theatre – Toronto, ON
• April 23: The Agora Theater & Ballroom – Cleveland, OH
• April 24: Stage AE – Pittsburgh, PA
• April 26: The Met – Philadelphia, PA
• April 28: Aragon Ballroom – Chicago, IL
• April 29: The Masonic Temple Theatre – Detroit, MI
• April 30: The Rave/Eagles Club – Milwaukee, WI
• May 1: Myth Live – St. Paul, MN
• May 3: TCU Place – Saskatoon, SK
• May 4: Grey Eagle Events Centre – Calgary, AB
• May 5: EDM Expo Centre – Edmonton, AB
• May 7: Thunderbird Sports Centre – Vancouver, BC
• May 8: Paramount Theater – Seattle, WA
• May 9: Keller Auditorium – Portland, OR
• May 11: Municipal Auditorium – Riverside, CA

Back in 2020, Opeth frontman Mikael Åkerfeldt spoke with Guitar World about the making of In Cauda Venenum.

“This time I was ruthless,” he said. “I focused intently on what I love – not what the band likes or what people think we're supposed to be. On the last album [2016's Sorceress], there were a couple moments where I thought to myself, ‘Hey, let me write something the guys like playing.’ I loved it, too, but the first goal was to please them.

“This time, I was a complete narcissist. That's why it's more of an emotional record and the song arrangements are more elaborate and eclectic. It was about what sounded good to me.”

While there's currently no new Opeth material in the works – at least to our knowledge – fans can hear guitarist Fredrik Åkesson's contributions on Ghost's new album, Impera. As Åkesson explained earlier this month, he had to “scale down” his leads on the album, at the request of frontman Tobias Forge.

“It was very different [to recording with Opeth],” he told Guitar.com. “It was more of a session job. I thought I was going to be able to design a few solos but [Forge and producer Klas Åhlund] thought they were over the top. I had to scale it down, with more melodic solos – more constructed. Tobias and Klas were very picky.”

Mastodon and Opeth have joined forces for a 15-date US tour later this year, and will be supported by Swiss avant-garde metallers Zeal & Ardor.

Commencing November 16 at the ExploreAsheville.com Arena in Asheville, NC, and wrapping up December 5 at the Mission Ballroom in Denver, CO, the tour arrives in support of Mastodon's forthcoming ninth studio album Hushed and Grim, which the band describes as their “most ambitious body of work to date”.

The new double-disc record – which is the Atlanta metallers' first since 2017's Emperor of Sand – is touted by guitarist Bill Kelliher to be their “biggest-sounding” LP yet. 

“We all just kind of [went into it] with open minds,” he told Talking Metal earlier this year. “The result is amazing. It's the fullest, biggest-sounding record we've done so far.” Check out the video for the album's first single Pushing the Tides below.

The tour also arrives a few months before the release of Zeal & Ardor's self-titled third studio album, although as three singles have been released thus far – Bow, Erase and Run – fans will likely hear some of the new material live.

Pre-sale tickets for the tour are available from today (September 15) at 10am local time – and general onsale begins Friday September 17 at 10am local time. See below for a full list of dates.

• Nov 16 - Asheville, NC - ExploreAsheville.com Arena     
• Nov 18 - Boston, MA - Wang Theater
• Nov 19 - Albany, NY - Palace Theatre
• Nov 20 - New York City - Hammerstein Ballroom
• Nov 21 - Washington, DC - Anthem
• Nov 23 - Nashville, TN - The Ryman Auditorium
• Nov 24 - Atlanta, GA - The Eastern
• Nov 26 - Austin, TX - ACL Live
• Nov 27 - Dallas, TX - Southside Music Hall
• Nov 28 - Houston, TX - Smart Financial Centre @ Sugarland     
• Nov 30 - Mesa, AZ - Mesa Amphitheater
• Dec 01 - Los Angeles, CA - Hollywood Palladium
• Dec 02 - Oakland, CA - Fox Theater
• Dec 04 - Salt Lake City, UT - Union
• Dec 05 - Denver, CO - Mission Ballroom

For more information, and to buy tickets, head to Mastodon's official website.

Widely regarded as one of the greatest progressive metal records of all-time, 2001’s Blackwater Park was the album that saw Opeth step out of the underground and into the limelight, establishing themselves as one of the most exciting prospects in heavy music.

More stylistically diverse than the four albums preceding it, with a crisper sonic clarity courtesy of Steven Wilson’s production treatment, its eight sprawling tracks showcased the wild breadth of singer, guitarist and leader Mikael Åkerfeldt’s imagination – then just 26 years old.

Frenetic death metal and melodic symphonies entwine and then fade into ethereal acoustic lullabies, with moody jazz interludes and folky fingerpicking softening the attack to majestic extremes. And despite the finger-twisting assault course of ideas and intricate embellishments detailing many of its riffs, there’s a striking fluidity to match the flawless execution.

Album number five would pave their path to world recognition and the accolades that come along with it, though at the time life was very different for Åkerfeldt – who, by his own admission, felt like he was on the road to nowhere…

“It’s weird talking about these songs now being 20 years old,” he tells Guitar World, speaking from his home in Stockholm, Sweden on a warm summer’s day.

“I was living in a small one-bedroom flat and didn’t really have much going for me or the band. We’d done four records prior and there was little interest, I would say. I mean, the people who liked us really liked us but there were too few. 

“We never had any feedback or any help. So to me our future looked bleak... just like the song! I didn’t have any high hopes, but I was proud of the material I’d written. I’d also kinda come to terms with the idea that ‘it’ might not happen for us. When we started, I was young and figured a record deal meant it was pretty much done… I wasn’t so much of a fuck-up or failure after all! But that didn’t turn out to be true. We’d done four albums and I was a complete loser [laughs].”

It’s hard to imagine the Opeth leader thinking of himself in that way, but that sense of never quite arriving was something that weighed on his mind. Though he appreciated their underground success, he couldn’t just shake off the feeling his band could be doing a lot better.

“You’d compare yourself not even with musical peers but people from your school,” he continues. “Old classmates, who you might run into from time to time and they’d have flourishing careers. Even if I thought their careers sounded boring, at least they had something to survive on. I was bitter and beaten down, I think, writing for this record. I didn’t have much hope for us. All I knew was that I liked the music I’d written…”

Not that there was much of it. A lot of the tracks came together at Studio Fredman almost haphazardly, with many parts being written and rewritten only moments before being recorded. Åkerfeldt’s logic was that the snippets of music he’d already come up with were a good enough indication of how this album could turn out – it was just a case of getting started and letting creativity dictate where to go...

“Most of the tracks had some major changes,” he explains. “I’d demoed parts of Bleak, Harvest, The Drapery Falls and perhaps the title track at a friend’s house, but I came up with a lot of stuff in the studio. This album and its predecessor, Still Life, were done like that and left up in the air. It was a stepping-stone into that way writing and recording, because for the following records, Deliverance and Damnation, I had no songs! 

“I was brimming with confidence in some weird way, so decided to make two albums with no songs written, which was a bit rich! I figured I was some type of genius who could come up with all of this music overnight. That turned out to be a bad decision for the sessions [laughs]! For Still Life and Blackwater Park, it seemed to work. I had so much music inside of me...”

From what we know, the main guitars on Blackwater Park were your PRS CE24 and a Gibson Les Paul Custom...

“That sounds about right. Peter played a 1973 Les Paul Custom – he wanted one made the year he was born. It was in beaten shape, the neck had been broken and fixed up but it was a pretty good guitar. I’d bought my first PRS from Anders [Nyström] who plays in Katatonia...”

And then for acoustics, you had a Seagull S6CW acoustic and a Yamaha 12-string...

“I loved that Seagull guitar. I don’t know where it is now. Maybe [Opeth co-guitarist] Fredrik [Åkesson] has it! It was in two pieces when I got it: the neck was completely broken off the body. I worked in a guitar shop in the early '90s and another shop distributed these Canadian Seagull guitars...

“I had a friend there and asked if I could borrow one for recording. He gave me this broken acoustic. I was actually thinking of going to a landfill and throwing it, but I decided to fix it up. I glued it back together and did a lot of work on it, so it looked awful but sounded nice and had good intonation. There was a big bump on the 14th fret but it was a nice guitar, overall. I can’t remember a Yamaha, but there might have been one.”

You started using Laney amps for your live shows around this time, but what amps are we hearing on the record?

“Yeah, I think we landed the Laney endorsement just after Blackwater Park was finished, right around the tour. I don’t think we recorded through Laneys, though. We were at Fredrik Nordström studios and he had just acquired an Engl amp. He told me it was the kind of thing Ritchie Blackmore would use and I said, ‘Okay, that’s great… perfect!’ I think he also had a 5150, but I can’t remember which we used where. 

“In those days, we were tracking four guitars and [ex-member] Peter Lindgren would play his parts through one amp and I’d use a different one. I can’t even remember if I put down most of the rhythm guitars. But I was trying to incorporate Peter in the process as much as possible. There were times before, like on our third album, where he just didn’t cut it. And he knew it – so he’d give me the guitar saying, ‘I can’t do this bit – you do it because we’ve already spent an hour here!’”

It doesn’t sound like a huge amount of effects were used, other than some tremolo and EBow on The Drapery Falls, and maybe some phaser here and there...

“The EBow I bought for Still Life ended up all over that record. Maybe we went a bit overboard on that album and on tracks like this [laughs]. Steven Wilson held the reins a bit when I was trying to put EBow on everything, which is why it’s more subtle on Blackwater Park. And it’s similar with me and the [Electro-Harmonix] Small Stone – I had one of the big green Russian ones. I still have one today, that’s how much I love that sound. 

“I don’t remember a tremolo pedal, so it was probably a software thing that Steven had. I wish I could remember these things but I honestly didn’t know I’d be talking about this 20 years later [laughs]. Steven was so advanced; he could find what he was looking for in a couple of seconds. If it sounded good, we’d just move on.

“In those days, I wasn’t so meticulous about having the ‘real deal’. If it sounded good, that would be enough for me. When Fredrik joined, though, we transformed into one of those ‘real deal’ bands because he’s so into gear.”

The album opener, The Leper Affinity, has some truly exquisite harmonized guitars before the acoustic interlude where you sing ‘Lost are days of spring’...

“I might have demoed parts of this song before we recorded it, with no vocals and a shitty sound. It would tend to be short segments of songs that I would record. I came up with the acoustic section just from noodling.

“We decided to put this song first because it’s a bit more ‘upbeat’ in tempo than, say, the title track which is a fast double bass song, but not really in terms of bpm. The Leper Affinity had a bit more pace so we made it the opener. You always want to smack the listener open-handedly in the face!”

Bleak has some similar moments, going from metallic thunder to chordal interludes like where you sing, ‘Help me cure you’...

“It’s a good part. The main thing I remember is that the demo version had pretty shitty opening riff. It was bad. Listening back to it, I was thinking how our label could even agree to release it. 

“But then [ex-drummer] Martin Lopez ended up playing me something by Kurdish singer called İbrahim Tatlıses. I guess it was Kurdish pop music, but to my ears it sounded evil. It had notes in their scales that you didn’t really find in Western scales, with bends that were in between notes. I immediately rewrote the beginning of Bleak...”

Which has quite a Phrygian Dominant feel thanks to its usage of major 3rds with minor 2nds and 6ths. To be honest, a lot of the music you’ve written over the years has felt more outside – incorporating elements of the diminished, melodic and harmonic minor scales…

“I find a lot of inspiration in those kinds of sounds. I was a bit fed up of the standard kind of death metal. I was still discovering lots of progressive rock bands. I also loved what Rainbow and Deep Purple did with those kinds of notes. The same goes for Led Zeppelin. There was something magical about those intervals. 

“I tried to incorporate that into Opeth from pretty much the start, and while it felt wrong playing a lot of those notes to begin with, by Blackwater Park I was well-versed in those kinds of scales. I started to use them more and more within my music. I still do, to this day.”

How exactly did you learn them? 

“You stumble upon your favorite moods. After a while, it’s like you’ve taught yourself to go from playing pentatonic blues to something more Middle Eastern-sounding. And soon enough, that’s where your fingers will move automatically whenever you pick up a guitar. It’s not necessarily in my DNA, but it’s not far away.

“The same goes for jazz chords. I wish I had more theory knowledge – I usually find out what chords I’ve used after playing them, when people tell me… and I tend not to be listening anyway [laughs].

“I’ve been playing guitar for such a long time, and I don’t think I’m particularly good, but I can still find things on the fretboard I haven’t played before and sometimes things I haven’t heard before. Guitar is amazing in that sense. You can not know what you’re doing and that can somehow help you in more ways than it stops you [laughs].”

The solo for Harvest is quite different in feel to other leads, with a gypsy-led bounce before it ends up somewhere more bluesy...

“I wanted to surprise the listener with certain notes. Because the chords themselves are pretty standard – a lot of barre stuff, typical major and minor shapes. They weren’t hugely exciting in that sense. I wanted to write progressive weird crazy things and this song wasn’t that. But there was a nice melody and order to the chords. I knew I wanted a solo because one of my strengths as a guitarist, when I’m not shy, is to play slow and melodic. 

“But I also wanted to play over something that wasn’t typical. I wrote it in the studio by fiddling around and seeing what fits – it was quite difficult. I couldn’t rely on my usual tricks. In the end, I think it came out pretty tasteful and exciting. It’s not your typical bluesy solo, and I love those too, but back then I was really trying to avoid moving in regular territory. It was my chance to dive into something weird. It worked... it didn’t fuck up the vibe of the song; it added something. It’s one of the solos I’m still happy with.”

The Drapery Falls has always been a popular live track, going from two-chorded simplicity as you sing ‘Spiraling to the ground below’ to those jarring tritone parts that creep up chromatically...

“That one came out pretty nice. It’s song I can still relate to 20 years on. I could have written it today, so I guess it hasn’t really aged in a way. Other things we’d done before that feel so remote now, I would never write that today. I’m just not that guy anymore. I must admit I wouldn’t have written the chaotic chromatic part now…

“I must have known it was a bit shit when I came up with it, which is why I decided to play it again one fret up to get even more dissonant. Honestly, that riff was probably something I never liked. It wasn’t even a riff, more just a part. If something was heavy but a bit bland – I guess my trick back then was to play it again a fret higher to make it really clash [laughs]!”

Dirge For November has some truly mesmerizing A-minor jazz ideas at the beginning and end...

“On Still Life, Peter didn’t contribute at all. He would never say anything, but I could tell he was not happy about that. I think it made him feel small, like I didn’t allow him. On Blackwater Park, he wrote a couple of riffs that we put in the heavier verses of Dirge For November, and I wrote the rest.

“It’s a bittersweet song because I guess that’s the last song we did together. And it’s actually my favorite from the record, just so dark and simple. We’d left it out, never really playing it live until we did the Blackwater Park anniversary shows.

“That’s when I realized it was a really fuckin’ nice song! Maybe it felt too sad to play, but it’s a very evocative track. This and Harvest are probably the ones I’m most proud of, while there are parts of others I think are really good. After two decades, I might wonder, ‘Why did I write that shit – it’s horrible!’ Other things still feel good and I can relate to, which is a nice feeling to have about your own music.”

There’s some great interaction between your acoustic and Steven Wilson’s piano on Patterns in the Ivy – the perfect duet to set up the grand finale of the title track...

“Yeah! It’s just a simple A minor type of thing. I think it was Steven’s idea to put piano on there and we were really happy, because we wanted him on the album… he was our idol! We hadn’t done any vocals at that point and he wandered over to the grand piano saying he might try something out. We said, ‘Yeah, knock yourself out!’ 

“I left that open space for his piano do to whatever it needed and it was one or two takes. And he’s not a pianist – I don’t think he’d ever call himself great at it – but he has this ability to play beautiful things. The first one was so good and we said, ‘That’s it!’ But he felt it wasn’t, so did another take that was almost as good with all the key moments. The first one, however, felt extra-magical, so that’s what got used.”

• The 20th anniversary reissue of Blackwater Park is out on July 16 via Music For Nations and available to preorder now.

Opeth’s most recent album, In Cauda Venenum, was issued in 2019, but now the Swedish prog-metal masters have announced a new release, and it’s a special one – a 20th anniversary reissue of Blackwater Park. 

The seminal 2001 effort was the band’s fifth full-length overall, and the one that saw them begin the shift from a predominantly death-metal-focused style to a more adventurous and progressive approach.

The new version will be offered in a heavyweight vinyl version with a variety of deluxe finishes, as well as housed in a gatefold artwork sleeve with updated liner notes and acknowledgements.

The deluxe variants, including a hardcase CD, come furnished with an updated artwork booklet complete with new liner notes, never-before-seen memories from the band and exclusive content provided by the Opeth fanbase.

Said Opeth front man and guitarist Mikael Åkerfeldt about the record, “I know that Blackwater Park was the stepping stone into professionalism for us. Since then the band has taken up all our time, and we’ve never really looked back. Always forward.”

He continued, “It’s well known that Steven Wilson came in to produce the album, and that set off a lifelong friendship. I like to think the songs were different from what most other bands were doing at the time, but the production definitely set us apart from the rest. Steven helped to highlight the true strength of the band which was, and still is, our diversity.”

Blackwater Park will be released July 16 on deluxe CD, white vinyl and colored vinyl featuring a bonus track The Leper Affinity (Live), and is available for preorder here.

NAMM 2021 isn't taking place in the physical realm this year, but you'll find all the hottest January gear launches in our guide to the biggest guitar, amp and pedal releases of 2021 so far.

Martín Méndez, bassist for progressive-metal titans Opeth, has partnered with Sandberg for his own signature bass guitar.

Based on Sandberg’s California TT Passive, the Martín Méndez Signature features an alder body, available with a Soft Age finish in Virgin White or an ash body with Black Matt finish.

A six-bolt-on hard-rock maple neck is teamed with a matching headstock and ebony fingerboard, with the option of a maple fingerboard with black block inlays on the Black Matt model.

Tone-wise, Méndez has equipped the bass with two Delano JMVC pickups and positioned them closer to the bridge for a little more bite than Sandberg’s regular pickup position.

Those pickups are adjusted via volume, balance and treble-cut controls, while Sandberg’s ‘Vibration Treatment’ promises an improved resonance and worn-in tone.

The Martín Méndez Signature will be available as a 34”-scale four-string or 35”-scale five-string, with the price TBC.

Head over to Sandberg for more info.

With his two daughters, 15-year-old Melinda and 12-year-old Mirjam, in the back seat of his car, Opeth founder Mikael Åkerfeldt was more concerned about getting his kids to school on time than he was in mapping out the band’s 13th studio album. 

It was a frigid December morning before 8am in Stockholm, and right after he dropped his children off he headed to his rehearsal space, where he planned to woodshed some parts he had written. As he sat at a red light, a thought rang through his mind. “What if we do the entire album in Swedish?”

Åkerfeldt chuckled at the idea. He wrote all of the band’s other songs in English and he loved the poetic flow of the language - even back in Opeth’s early days in the mid to late '90s when he growled his vocals and the band’s music was largely influenced by death and black metal.

These days, Opeth are far more firmly rooted in textural progressive hard rock, colored with strings, keyboards and samples. But the impetus for creation remains the same as it was when Opeth worked on their groundbreaking 1995 death metal album, Orchid.

Consistency is far less significant than creativity. Musical motifs have remained throughout the decades (long songs, brooding atmospheres), but Åkerfeldt has insisted Opeth evolve and change at least slightly with each release.

The guitarist and vocalist admits that, at first, it seemed silly to try to write an album in Swedish, especially since English is the universal language of nearly all rock music. But the more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea.

“I figured, ‘Why not?’” Åkerfeldt tells us. “I’ve never done it and it sounds like fun. Let’s do that.”

A powerful by-product came with the new format. Åkerfeldt discovered that when he worked in Swedish, his lyrics were less flowery and far more personal than when he sang in English. He wrote about his divorce from his first wife Anna and the pain it caused his family, the transitory nature of time and the depression he suffered after his divorce.

“I didn’t only divorce my wife,” he says. “I divorced my kids 50 percent of the time because my ex and I share custody. Also, I had to find a new place to live, and all the change was very horrendous for me. I was literally pulling my hair and I realized I needed to go into therapy to deal with depression and anxiety. I only did about 10 sessions of cognitive therapy and I was able to work out a lot of issues. 

But I could never really understand mental illness until it happened to me. I was like, ‘Whoa, what’s going on? I feel like shit just because of what’s going on in my mind?’”

The more personal Åkerfeldt’s lyrics became, the more emotional expression filtered into the music. Opeth’s new album, In Cauda Venenum (Latin for "the poison is in the tail”), conveys Åkerfeldt’s sensitivity and discovery with an abundance of melancholy arpeggios and fingerpicked solos, yearning strings, piano and pensive tenor vocals and operatic frills. 

The tender passages are balanced by more energized but equally conflicted bursts of distorted guitar, keening keys, meandering bass and battering drums reminiscent of Seventies prog bands such as King Crimson and Yes, but with the psychedelic flair that puts us in mind of Pink Floyd and German Krautrock band Amon Düül II. The different sonic landscapes are alternately grandiose and cinematic, jittery and claustrophobic, delicate and heartbreaking.

“My favorite type of music is the stuff that could potentially make me cry,” Åkerfeldt says. “I love prog rock, but when there’s too much intricate showmanship, the music doesn’t make me feel anything. If I write a piece of music and it doesn’t hit my emotions, it doesn’t matter how good it is. I delete it and try again. That happens a lot.”

Not only is Åkerfeldt a perfectionist, he’s a bit of a control freak and extremely guarded about all the songs on In Cauda Venunum, which have been released in both Swedish and English versions. 

“This time I was ruthless. I focused intently on what I love - not what the band likes or what people think we’re supposed to be,” he says. “On the last album [2016’s Sorceress], there were a couple moments where I thought to myself, ‘Hey, let me write something the guys like playing.’ I loved it, too, but the first goal was to please them. 

"This time, I was a complete narcissist. That’s why it’s more of an emotional record and the song arrangements are more elaborate and eclectic. It was about what sounded good to me.”

For the past 12 years, Opeth’s not-so-secret weapon has been lead guitarist Fredrik Åkesson, who previously played with Arch Enemy from 2005 to 2007. In addition to tracking almost all of the band’s electric guitar solos, Åkesson added shade and dimension to the rhythms and helped guide Åkerfeldt when he was trying to decide what chords worked best in a given song.

So, after he demoed the tracks he played them to Åkesson for feedback. “Whenever I presented a song to him, he was like, ‘That’s cool. That’s awesome. Is there a guitar solo?’” Åkerfeldt says, then laughs. “I said, ‘You know what? There are lots of guitar solos.’ But I never catered to Fredrik. The solos are there because the songs needed them.”

When he wrote his leads for the demos, Åkesson let loose, playing parts that were slow and reflective like Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour as well as faster legato lines reminiscent of Deep Purple’s Ritchie Blackmore.

“At one point, I told Fredrik, ‘OK, now is the time for a really fast arpeggio run,’ and he reacted, ‘What?! Did you just say what I thought you said?’ He was smiling and happy, which was awesome.”

“When I was about to record the lead for Minnets yta (Lovelorn Crime),’ Mikael said to me, ‘When you die, I want people to remember you through this solo,’” Åkesson says. “I was like, ‘Thanks, man. Thanks for the pressure.’”

Åkesson started taking guitar lessons at 12 years old and is skilled in music theory and composition. His earliest influences were Deep Purple, early Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne, Gary Moore, Uli Jon Roth, Michael Schenker, Frank Marino, Jeff Beck and Yngwie Malmsteen, and he played his first live gig at 19 when he was in Talisman, which featured two future members of Yngwie Malmsteen’s Rising Force. 

He played thrash, death metal and neo-classical guitar in various bands, and when longtime guitarist Peter Lindgren left Opeth in 2007, Åkesson enthusiastically jumped onboard.

“I’ve been lucky to play all sorts of different genres over the years and I think that helps a lot with what I do in Opeth,” he says. “Of course, I love to go off and shred, but I think the goal with a good prog band is to do something musical. It’s like putting salt on your food. If you have just the right amount it tastes great, but if you put too much on, you ruin it.”

Åkerfeldt started playing professionally at 14 in the Swedish death metal band Eruption in 1987. After the band dissolved in 1990, he joined Opeth, first on bass, then on guitar and vocals. One of the most impressive aspects of Åkerfeldt’s songwriting is that he doesn’t always know exactly what he’s doing. Since he’s completely self-taught and doesn’t read music, he writes entirely from intuition and strives to replicate what he hears in his head.

“For me,” he continues, “it’s all about trial and error - experimenting with different things to see what sounds good. The same goes for acoustic arpeggios and fingerpicking. I don’t know any kind of theory and I only taught myself to pick the guitar with three fingers, but that seems to be good enough for what I want to do.”

“I’m always amazed by Mikael because he doesn’t know anything about modes and scales,” Åkesson says. “Yet he mixes modes and scales a lot in his riffs. One riff could consist of three different modes. It’s all in his head, which is pretty cool. Maybe that’s why he comes up with a lot of original stuff because he doesn’t really know what he’s doing, but in his own way he definitely knows what he’s doing.”

Åkerfeldt has compensated for his lack of formal musical training by thoroughly absorbing the music he loves to compulsively listen to and then tracing back the lineage of the various genres to their roots. To date, he has done this with metal, prog, doom, folk, classic rock, soundtrack music and, most recently, a little jazz.

“Perhaps the one biggest influence on me in the last five years is a Swedish trumpeter named Lars Färnlöf, who did the score for the late-Sixties B-movie thriller The Chameleon,” Åkerfeldt reveals. “He wrote the score and hired the crème de la crème of the Swedish jazz scene to play on it, and it’s one of the most beautiful records I’ve ever heard in my life. That kind of sound rubbed off on me on songs like Banemannen (The Garroter).”

Another major discovery for Åkerfeldt was the string arrangements of Philamore Lincoln, a relatively obscure songwriter who released one album, The North Wind Blew South, in 1970. “The North Wind Blew South is monumentally beautiful,” he says. “The strings on that record took me to another place.”

As musically obsessed as he is, Åkerfeldt stopped buying albums that were released after 1976, partly since that was when punk rock became popular, which, to Åkerfeldt, was a bad omen. Despite the '60s vibes of In Cauda Venenum, there are modern touches. 

The first song, Livets trädgård (Garden of Earthly Delights), starts with a choir, haunting keyboards and ambient electronic passages that could be mistaken for The Orb. Yet Åkerfeldt’s interest in electronic music begins and ends with Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk.

That explains, in part, why Opeth, though innovative and inspiring, rarely sound truly modern. They just prefer to do brand-new things with old sounds.

“That’s true,” Åkerfeldt agrees. “But it would be quite misleading to think of Opeth as just a prog band.

“The term prog-rock has become a style now that doesn’t necessarily refer to music that’s progressing. It’s all about intricate guitar solos and lots of noodling and weird time signatures. We love some of that stuff and we have long songs too, but there’s more to us. There are so many other styles of music we draw from.”

Åkerfeldt wrote and demoed In Cauda Venenum at his own Junkyard Studio (which doubles as the band’s practice space) between January 2018 and the end of the year. He worked on one song at a time until he hit an obstacle. Then, instead of trying to plow through the impasse, he started another track until he got stuck on that one. 

Whenever he was inspired, he switched back and forth between songs. Sometimes, he worked on as many as three tracks at once. Some, including the reverie-inspiring Ingen sanning är allas (Universal Truth), took more than a month to complete.

Others, including the somber Minnets yta (Lovelorn Crime) and the luminous, ethereal Allting tar slut (All Things Will Pass), were written from start to finish in a day.

“Maybe that doesn’t happen with all the more elaborate pieces,” Åkerfeldt says. “But sometimes everything floods out naturally. Some people will thank God for it, but I don’t really know where it comes from, but it’s natural, so I don’t question the process.”

For the most part, the creative process for In Cauda Venenum was much the same as the formula that Opeth have been following for years, but with one key exception. After Åkerfeldt finished writing, the rest of the band diligently rehearsed the album together before they went into the studio. 

“We hadn’t done that since [2008’s] Watershed,” Åkesson explains. “I think it was great to do that because everybody had their parts down to muscle memory by the time we recorded.”

The change in protocol gave the guitarists more time experimenting with different equipment. Park Studios was a true gear lover’s paradise. The band recorded on a Sixties EMI TG12345 console from the hallowed Abbey Road Studios and a Neve 8058 board similar to the one at New York’s Electric Lady Studios.

For amps, Opeth tried out some Marshalls and Friedmans but opted for an Olsson 100-watt custom-built prototype amp by an engineer who lives near Åkesson.

“We used it for everything. We even played bass through it,” Åkerfeldt says. “The song Charlatan is just three bass guitars, and we kind of blew some of the power tubes on the Olsson. We tried using it again for the next song and it simply didn’t sound as good.”

Park Studios also had an abundance of guitars. Åkerfeldt chose a ’72 Strat with a rosewood neck, and Åkesson went with a ’72 Strat with a maple neck. Opeth also used the following: a ’79 Gibson Flying V, ’77 Gibson Black Beauty Les Paul, ’58 Gibson SG, ’65 Gibson SG Junior, ’58 Fender Sunburst Strat, Sixties Fender Jaguar, Sixties Gretsch Bullet, a Junior and some new PRS guitars. 

The PRS models included the Mark Tremonti Signature, the JA-15 jazz hollowbody, the Angelus, the P22, P24, the 594 Blackgold and the SC245. Many of the guitars were customized with humbuckers; for the heavy passages, Åkerfeldt doubled single-coil P90s with the humbuckers to provide extra depth. Opeth also toyed with various effects.

“We do a lot to try to find cool sounds,” Åkerfeldt continues. “I’m a sucker for spring reverbs. The record is bathing in that sound. And we also used [MXR] Carbon Copy analog delays.

We recorded all the reverb and the other effects [including an MXR Phase 90, Univox Super Fuzz, Dunlop Blue Silicon Fuzz Face and EarthQuaker Hoof and Tone Reaper pedals with oldschool analog octave up] when we did the basic tracks, so we couldn’t go back and change our minds afterwards. We recorded using Pro Tools, but no effects were added after the rhythms were recorded.”

Åkerfeldt and Åkesson tracked all of the electric rhythms before Åkerfeldt added all of the acoustic parts using a Martin, an old Bjärton and even a Levin Lute Guitar.

“As far as my acoustic guitar influences go, I’m really into the older folk singer-songwriters like Bert Jansch from Pentangle, who experimented a lot with open tuning and was a great finger picker. He, in turn, also inspired people like Jimmy Page and Nick Drake, both of whom I love.”

For leads, Åkesson mostly played a PRS P24 and P245, but he also used the Flying V for the heaviest parts. With few exceptions, he replicated solos he recorded for the demos and finished tracking in seven hours. 

“I always go in with the mindset that I’m going to redo all the demo solos for the album,” Åkesson says. “I want to do something fantastic, but I get so used to the versions on the demos that I usually just pimp them up and tighten them just a little bit.”

Åkerfeldt and Åkesson used to fly around with a mountain of costly gear; these days, like folk hero Jansch, they’re traveling light. On the road, Åkerfeldt carries three PRS P24s with piezo bridges and a PRS McCarty II while Åkesson relies on his grey-black P245 and the SC245. 

Officially, Opeth are still endorsed by Marshall; however, Akerfeldt and Akesson have been using a Synergy amp system for much of the past year. Their go-to setup uses Marshall 800 and Soldano modules plugged into a Friedman amp.

“I can do everything with it,” Åkerfeldt says. “I use one heavy rhythm guitar sound, one heavy lead guitar sound, one softer distorted sound that I call the old man’s rock sound, one clean electric sound with string reverb and echo and one piezo sound. And, to me, it sounds way more realistic than amp modelers because it’s the real thing.”

With the release of In Cauda Venenum, Opeth have passed yet another career landmark, creating heartfelt, confessional Swedish and English versions of a modern prog album filled with superlative songwriting and exceptional playing. 

Originally, Åkerfeldt didn’t plan to record an English version, but he didn’t want English-speaking fans to feel alienated, so after he finished the Swedish version he transposed the lyrics into English and recorded the vocals. Rather than viewing the move as a compromise, Åkerfeldt sees it as a gesture to fans who want to listen to the album but favor English lyrics.

13 albums into their career, Opeth fill venues across the world and play priority slots at big festivals. For Åkerfeldt, that’s just fine. He once strived to get more and more popular with every release; now he’s content to play to the music he loves to dedicated fans.

“I wouldn’t mind if we got as big as Tool, but I don’t have those aspirations,” he says. “I believe it can taint the music to have those aspirations, and that ulterior motive is a bit ugly to me. To play in front of a thousand people is all I need - or 500, for that matter, or 20. If someone comes and watches us, I’m happy. But I wouldn’t adjust the music to cater to bigger audience. That would be the death of this band.”

In case you haven’t noticed, here at Guitar World we tend to cover what Joe Bonamassa has to say. But it’s not too often we get to report on what other electric guitar players have to say about Joe Bonamassa.

Enter Opeth frontman Mikael Åkerfeldt, who recently aired his thoughts on the blues titan to Premier Guitar. And he had nice things to offer – sort of.

“Even if I love his guitar playing,” Åkerfeldt opined of JoBo, “I’m not sure how he sounds. I think he’s a product of his influences. So I wouldn’t be able to pick him out of a hundred players. He’s just fucking skilled and has a great tone, great emotion, and all that stuff. He’s also got his influences on his sleeve. He can emulate his idols to the point where he plays their stuff much better than they can.

“But what does Joe Bonamassa sound like? I wouldn’t know.”

When it comes to his favorite guitarists, Åkerfeldt made it clear that for him, it’s still all about the classic hard rock and metal players from his youth.

“It’s the same guys from back in the day,” he said. “There’s some newer players that I think are really good, but many sound the same to me. It goes with metal music in general. I think it’s very same-y. Some of those players are fucking great. I just can’t hear that it’s them. It’s not like Gilmour. You instantly hear it’s him. Ritchie Blackmore, you hear it’s him. Jimmy Page, Michael Schenker, Uli Roth, you hear it’s them.”

He continued: “Then the acoustic players that I really like – I discovered Tommy Emmanuel maybe 10 years ago. He’s fucking fantastic. When you hear him play, it’s like, ‘Wow, I wish I could play like that.’

“I also love Bert Jansch and Nick Drake. Joni Mitchell is very underrated. Then there’s rhythm players, like James Hetfield, Malcolm Young, Dave Mustaine, and those guys.

Finally, Åkerfeldt also cited his fellow countryman, Yngwie Malmsteen. Similar to Bonamassa, he offered mixed praise - as he has done on previous occasions - though for different reasons.

“I still love Yngwie! He’s got his sound and you can hear it right away. Unfortunately, you’re going to hear he wrote the song, too,” Akerfeldt said.

“If he’s reading this, I’m sorry. I love him. I have the utmost respect for him, but he could up his game a lot.”

The last few years have certainly kept Opeth’s lead electric guitar wizard Fredrik Åkesson busy.

Alongside touring commitments for the Swedish progressive metal titans’ Sorceress cycle, he’s been recording his parts for latest release In Cauda Venenum: a head-twisting masterpiece that will undoubtedly be remembered as one of the band’s finest.

But it doesn’t end there, beyond the otherworldly progressive rock perfected in his main group, Åkesson has been collaborating with Saxon singer Biff Byford – who releases his debut solo album next year – while also finding the time to team up with Olsson Amps for their all-new, higher-gain Little Hill 20 head.

Naturally, being one of the most tastefully technical gunslingers in rock has made him an incredibly valuable asset to have on board for any guitar-related project…

“I met John Olsson through this local store called Deluxe Music, who have this annual barbecue thing,” says Åkesson, on his involvement with the Stockholm-based hand-wired amp builder.

The Little Hill earned its title through both its low wattage and the guitarist’s ‘Kulle’ nickname, which means ‘Hill’ in their native tongue. It’s easily the closest thing you’ll find to a Fredrik Åkesson signature amp…

“We got talking and it turned out he was only a five-minute walk away from where I lived. He asked me to come down and try out some stuff. He mainly had boutique clean amps that were more like Fender Twins, but also kinda different.

“A lot of Swedish session players, like Georg ‘Jojje’ Wadenius who used to play with Aretha Franklin, use them. They’re very beautiful bluesy combo-style amps, not so high gain but very pedal-friendly...”

What did you hope to achieve with the Little Hill 20?

“He was interested in doing something with more distortion and I said, ‘Let’s go for it!’ His workshop is downstairs so I went in and started riffing on this smaller 20-watt head he’d made called the Studio 20.

“I was sat there riffing away asking for more gain and mids, or something like the Eddie Van Halen brown sound with nice separation if you strike a six-string chord. You want to always sound clear, even in more distorted situations – that’s probably where it’s most important.

“You need to cut through, so I’m more into the vintage approach than the scooped metal sounds. I like thinking of a Plexi that goes to… not 11, because that’s too Spinal Tap, but how about 16? It took about two years to get to the final prototype and now that model is fully available.”

Are there any recordings we can hear of you playing one?

“I used that amp on Biff Byford’s upcoming solo album [School Of Hard Knocks]. Some of the leads were done from home using that with a Torpedo Live speaker simulator and some imported IRs. It’s a great two-channel studio amp and perfect for club gigs. Those 20 watts deliver high volume, so you could even play bigger gigs with it.

“The clean tone is great – I didn’t have to do anything for that. John is the master of cleans. I mainly use clean for fingerpicked parts, and the Little Hill has a natural compression that’s really nice; you don’t need a pedal in front.

“We worked a lot on the effects loop because I really wanted it to be totally transparent. With a lot of amps, you put something in the loop and a part of the sound disappears… this weird crispiness leaves and you’re there wondering where it went! He managed to fix that and design one that didn’t suck any tone.”

Then John built you the 100-watt version that we hear on In Cauda Venenum...

“We’d actually been working on other models too, but yes – right before we went into the studio, he asked if I wanted a 100-watt head with that same gain structure. He didn’t have time to compare it or dial anything in, he literally just assembled something out of some EL34s and whatever transformers he had lying around. It had a clean channel with the crunch mode and then a high-gain switch for the distorted channels.

“We did a shoot-out for our rhythm guitars and it won the marathon. I had this gut feeling it would, actually. I tried it at the rehearsals – we actually rehearsed for this album, which we haven’t done since Watershed, and I could feel the chords pumping out and cutting through the bass and drums. So all of the rhythm guitars were pretty much that amp.

“There was also a Marshall Plexi in there and a Friedman BE100 that we used for leads, and then for cabinets we had two old Marshalls from the 60s – one with V30s and another with Greenback 25s. Since we were using the same Olsson head for our heavy rhythms, using different cabinets was a nice way of altering the two guitar sounds a little bit.”

And yet, the track Charlatan is notable for its heaviness despite its lack of guitars...

“Yeah, that one had no guitars at all! It’s me and Mikael [Åkerfeldt] playing bass, well Martin [Mendez] was playing the classic bass, and we were on tenor bass with extreme high-gain, panned left and right. So Martin’s sound was the foundation for it, right in the middle.

“We chose not to use guitars because Mikael didn’t want it to sound like a nu-metal track! Some people haven’t realized it’s all bass yet; they probably think we’re using eight-strings now. There was so much distortion I think ended up blowing the tubes!”

The Garroter, on the other hand, couldn’t be more different when it comes to your tones...

“That’s the jazzy oddball track on the album. It needed something different, which ended up being an old 335 through an old Gibson/Maestro amp from the '50s.

“Stefan Boman, who runs Park Studios, owns a lot of vintage gear. He also had this Chandler compressor that was from Abbey Road, an old expensive thing. It all made for a weird sound that really suited the short jazzy phrases I play after the choruses, where I’m using chromatic and dominant ideas.”

There’s always been a jazz side to Opeth’s music, but never quite like that...

“I don’t really know how to play a lot of that stuff, but I can figure out phrases. Whenever we have longer breaks, I try to understand different styles and hopefully raise my level a bit. Even if you play hard rock, trying to find inspiration from beyond is always a good thing.

“I still have my old metal heroes but it’s fun to listen to someone like Django Reinhardt, for instance, and absorb something from that. That track has some inspiration from him as well as some old Swedish folk tones, a lot of melodic minor kind of stuff. That scale has so much hidden within it – the altered scale is its seventh degree, then there’s also lydian dominant and more.”

There’s also a jazz mentality to your leads on Dignity, in that you play through seemingly unrelated non-diatonic chords...

“I had been saying to Mikael it would be great to do a solo that was phrased specifically to each chord, which gives you a new palette of melodic options to help your leads sound more interesting.

“I love playing over a dominant blues just at home, and while it probably doesn’t have that much in common with Dignity, you can target specific notes related to each chord even in blues. By learning triads and seventh arpeggios, you can find so much more beyond the regular pentatonic.

“If you know where to find the seventh degree of whatever parent major scale you are in, you can use all your half-diminished arpeggios there. Then there’s the full diminished approach, which you can mix with melodic minor and on that track I even played some augmented lines near the end.

“One guy who is the master of all this is Frank Marino from Mahogany Rush. I just got his newest live DVD, when he plays I’m A King Bee he does some jazzy stuff in the breaks. It’s so tasteful and fluid, he’s a great guitarist to listen to if you want to unlock that kind of thinking.

“I used a 1983 Korina Flying V for those solos, a black string-through guitar that I bought from a music fair. It’s basically a ‘58 reissue, which I believe was the first Flying V – that one that Albert King used! It also has that rubber bit on the edge so it doesn’t slip on your knee when you’re sat down.”

Did you have to chart it all out the old-fashioned way?

“Yes, I wrote down all the chords for that, because there are quite a few! It goes from F# minor to B# minor then C major to A suspended then A minor, down to G# major and C minor before ending on F# major. So it flips between major and minor voicings within the same chord, jumping all over the place. That can be difficult to improvise over!

“I came up with a lot of it on the fly for the demo. I had to relearn it all back home and then pimp it up a bit more, connecting the changes better. I find it’s better to stay in a neutral position where you can play through the different chords rather than starting a new scale elsewhere on the neck every time there’s a switch… it sounds more natural.”

Is it true you and Mikael used a Fender Mustang to record your parts for Heart In Hand?

“Yeah! That guitar probably looked more like it would be on the weak side, but not at all. We tried some humbucker guitars to begin with, but they weren’t cutting through enough.

“Martin was playing a Hofner bass, he’d gone totally vintage despite it being one of the more metal tracks on the record. That guitar managed to cut through his low-end and the overall rhythmic structure.

“We experimented a lot with different instruments on this album. We brought around 18 electric guitars in, and Stefan had a lot of vintage axes like ‘58 Strats, the Mustang, Gibson 12-strings and a bunch of other weird vintage things.

“It can be quite time-consuming to go through all the options in the studio. Luckily we’d done a lot of rehearsal before, because we were able to spend more time A/B testing tones. I don’t know if that guitar would have worked on the other tracks as well, but it really did the trick on Heart In Hand.

“The intro almost reminds me a bit of a James Bond kind of thing! The rhythms are quite tricky on that song; they alter between the intro and the verses. Some of those little tags at the end of the riff can be quite tricky.

“Mikael is really good at fooling the listener into thinking we’re in odd-time, when it’s actually very straight. The drums might create some sort of illusion but most of the time it’s 4/4. I might be wrong though, haha…”

As for other highlights, Universal Truth has some truly epic moments, and your solo on Lovelorn Crime showcases your more bluesy side...

“I love that big riff in Universal Truth - it has this Ritchie Blackmore Rainbow vibe to it. I actually did all my solos in one go, and they were done in about seven or eight hours.

“It seems like a lot of people like that Lovelorn Crime solo; I’ve been getting some nice feedback on it. Mikael told me to play the solo I would be remembered for, and I did it in one or two takes.

“I was trying to do something very emotional, more like Gary Moore or David Gilmour. I have a huge amount of respect for those gentlemen.

“It all starts around the D minor shape on the fifth fret and even borrows bits from the vocal melody at points. It’s very different to other solos like Continuum, where I play a bit more crazy, with all the big bends, anger and energy.

“I was probably thinking more along the lines of Uli Jon Roth and Frank Marino there, though I never think about someone specifically when I write or record. It always has to sound like me, I guess...”

In Cauda Venenum is out now via Nuclear Blast.

No matter who you ask, it seems everyone has an opinion on the electric guitar’s foremost neoclassical shredmeister, Yngwie Malmsteen - including Steel Panther’s chief riff merchant Satchel.

In a new interview with MusicRadar, discussing the 10 guitarists who blew his mind, the leopard-print enthusiast said, “He remains one of the most emotional guitar players of all time.

“He had so much feel that people often dismissed because he was so fast. His note choices were amazing, too… in my eyes, that made up for the fact his songwriting wasn’t quite up there with Van Halen or AC/DC.

“I loved Yngwie when he first came out, but as time went on I realized I only listened to him when I wanted to be inspired by awesome lead playing. If I’m in my car just driving around, I’ll probably to listen to something else.”

His comments echo those of Opeth main man Mikael Åkerfeldt, who recently said, “His records have been pretty fuckin’ shit for a long time, but the guitar playing has always been great.

As for Yngwie? He’s probably not bothered.

“I don’t try to please nine million people,” he told GW. “That’s not what I do. If some people don’t like it, that’s too bad.

“I’m not somebody that just came out of nowhere. I have an already-established guitar style, you know? And I never try to be something I’m not. So I apologize if I offended somebody!”

Opeth has released a new song, "Heart in Hand," (“Hjärtat Vet Vad Handen Gör” in Swedish) the first single from the band’s forthcoming 13th studio album, In Cauda Venenum.

Said Opeth singer, guitarist and songwriter Mikael Åkerfeldt about the new song, "'Hjärtat Vet Vad Handen Gör' or 'Heart in Hand,' as it's called in English, is one of the first couple of songs I wrote for In Cauda Venenum. I immediately knew that it would probably be favored by 'the powers that be' when talks of future singles for the record would commence. And I was right. I generally leave it up to the labels or managements to pick the so-called singles. I'm indifferent as I put an equal amount of dedication into all songs, so it doesn't matter all that much to me.”

He continued, “I guess it's one of the more straightforward songs on the album. A rather rocking little thing. It's got one of the 'happy mistakes' in it too. Mendez's bass broke down in the middle of recording. At the time he played an old Hofner Beatles-esque bass guitar that started humming real bad, but it sounded so good we immediately decided to keep it in there. I'd be putting myself down if I said that noise is the best part of the song, but it's up there. I like when stuff happens out of your control, and it actually adds to the piece. This is the first full taster of the new Opeth album, and of course I hope you like it. All the songs on the new album are different from each other and therefore equally representable in my view. Enjoy!"

In Cauda Venenum is due September 27 via Moderbolaget / Nuclear Blast Entertainment. The album was recorded at Park Studios in Stockholm and will be released in Swedish and English language versions.

You can check out the full track list below.

In Cauda Venenum track list:

01. Livet's Trädgård / Garden of Earthly Delights (Intro)

02. Svekets Prins / Dignity

03. Hjärtat Vet Vad Handen Gör / Heart in Hand

04. De Närmast Sörjande / Next of Kin

05. Minnets Yta / Lovelorn Crime

06. Charlatan

07. Ingen Sanning Är Allas / Universal Truth

08. Banemannen / The Garroter

09. Kontinuerlig Drift / Continuum

10. Allting Tar Slut / All Things Will Pass

Opeth have announced the forthcoming release of their 13th studio album, In Cauda Venenum. The new record is due in the fall via Moderbolaget / Nuclear Blast Entertainment.

Last year, guitarist Fredrik Akesson spoke to Face Culture (via Louder Sound) about the new material:

“We’re very much into demoing,” he said. “I’ve recorded a lot of solos so far and [singer and guitarist] Mikael Akerfeldt has already written 12 songs for the new album, so we have more than enough material for an album.” 

He continued: “Compared to the last three albums, I would say this album is more complex, more energetic and I think it’s gonna be something.”

In Cauda Venenum was recorded at Park Studios in Stockholm and will be released in both Swedish and English language versions. You can check out the cover art and full track list below. 

In Cauda Venenum track list:

01. Livet's Trädgård / Garden Of Earthly Delights (Intro)

02. Svekets Prins / Dignity

03. Hjärtat Vet Vad Handen Gör / Heart In Hand

04. De Närmast Sörjande / Next Of Kin

05. Minnets Yta / Lovelorn Crime

06. Charlatan

07. Ingen Sanning Är Allas / Universal Truth

08. Banemannen / The Garroter

09. Kontinuerlig Drift / Continuum

10. Allting Tar Slut / All Things Will Pass

Opeth have shared a live clip of the song "Demon of the Fall," from their forthcoming live effort Garden of the Titans: Live at Red Rocks Amphitheatre.

The live package will be released November 2 via Moderbolaget Records/Nuclear Blast Entertainment. It captures the band onstage at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Denver, Colorado on May 11, 2017, and will be released on DVD, Blu-ray and vinyl formats. Both the DVD and Blu-ray formats include CDs containing the audio as well.

The video footage for "Garden of the Titans" was overseen by The Deka Brothers (Carpenter Brut, The Prodigy) and audio was mixed by David Castillo (Katatonia, Bloodbath). All versions feature artwork by Travis Smith (Nevermore, Katatonia, Testament).

Garden of the Titans: Live at Red Rocks Amphitheatre track listing:

01. Sorceress (live)

02. Ghost Of Perdition (live)

03. Demon Of The Fall (live)

04. The Wilde Flowers (live)

05. In My Time Of Need (live)

06. The Devil's Orchard (live)

07. Cusp Of Eternity (live)

08. Heir Apparent (live)

09. Era (live)

10. Deliverance (live)

Garden of the Titans: Live at Red Rocks Amphitheatre can be pre-ordered here.

Swedish prog-metal group Opeth have premiered a new song, "Sorceress." Check it out below and let us know what you think in the comments.

Vocalist/guitarist Mikael Åkerfeldt said, “Here you go kids! Here’s the title track, 'Sorceress,' combined with the now obligatory lyric video. Why not, eh? We’re happy with the tune. It’s heavy, a bit 'meat and potato,' but what the hell…we love it! Hope you do too!”

The band's upcoming 12th studio album is due out September 30 via the band’s imprint label Moderbolaget Records with Nuclear Blast Entertainment.

In this Guitar World exclusive, we’ve gathered together Mustaine and his Megadeth coguitarist, Glen Drover, Lamb of God’s Mark Morton and Willie Adler, Arch Enemy’s Michael Amott and Fredrik Akesson, and Trivium’s Matt Heafy and Corey Beaulieu to teach you the essential skills of modern shred.

Using their own examples, we’ll show you everything from rhythm and lead playing to speed picking and sweep arpeggios. So grab your guitar and get ready for the ultimate lesson in shredding—21st century style.

[Note: Due to an unforeseen issue, there are gaps in the figure numbers in the following lesson. Rest assured, however, no content is missing!]

CHAPTER 1 “Sport Metal”: Modern Rhythm Methods

All the guitarists involved in this lesson have one thing in common: they are passionate and dedicated players who write great riffs, many of which are quite challenging to play. In fact, Arch Enemy’s Michael Amott described this type of playing as “sport metal.”

“Michael’s right: it is sport metal,” says Willie Adler. “There’s a real finesse to a lot of the riffs, and they’re physically challenging every time you play them. With the new songs we’re playing from Sacrament, I’ve got to warm up for at least an hour before we go onstage.”

We asked Adler’s co-axman, the always eloquent Mark Morton, to explain some of the rhythm playing differences between metal’s “old-school” and “nu-school.” Despite a brutal hangover, Morton not only stepped up to the plate but also came up with “the hangover riff” to illustrate his point.

“Here’s an example of what I would consider more of a late-Eighties, Bay Area–thrash take on the riff. And here’s a more contemporary style of doing the same riff,” Morton says as he performs FIGURE 1:1 then FIGURE 1:2. “As you can see, they’re the same pattern, the same note choices, but with a different and faster right-hand cadence, giving it a more modern, ‘deathy’ feel.”

As you can see and hear, the “right hand cadences” Morton is referring to involve “gallop” and “reverse gallop” picking patterns plus double picking a lot of the notes.

We asked all our guest teachers to name a few albums that they consider vital references to great metal rhythm work. In addition to Metallica’s seminal Master of Puppets and Pantera’s Vulgar Display of Power, Megadeth’s classic Rust in Peace topped the tally. Says Amott, “That album definitely set the bar pretty high for music like this. It’s full of ‘Hall of Fame’ riffs.”

Glen Drover, Megadeth’s lead guitarist, has a pretty challenging role—not only does he have to perform leads by his virtuoso predecessors Chris Poland and Marty Friedman; he also has to double Mustaine’s vast repertoire of “Hall of Fame” riffs. “Some of the rhythm patterns are equally demanding to play as the solos,” says Drover. “Take a song like ‘Holy Wars’—it’s incredibly busy, and there’s so much stuff in there that you’ve really got to be on top of your game.”

In addition to his ultraprecise picking and knack for writing riffs, Mustaine is the master of rhythmic nuance. “One thing I’ll often do with my rhythm playing is slide into a chord,” says Mustaine as he plays FIGURE 1:4. “That makes the chords really growl, like in ‘Ashes in My Mouth.” Another must-know Mustaine technique is his “spider finger” chord-grabbing technique, which he demonstrates in FIGURE 1:5 and PHOTOS A and B. “Alternating pairs of fingers like this is definitely easier than having to move your entire hand back and forth [see the “regular” fingering under the tablature]. If you have to move your hand, your timing is gonna be off and there will be string noise. Plus, you’ll be relying too much on guesswork.”

Like all metal masters, Mustaine uses palm muting (p.m.) to great effect. Palm muting is the technique of rolling the fleshy part of your palm [PHOTO C] forward from the bridge to dampen the strings. But as Mustaine points out, there is another way to stop notes from ringing, and you can do it with your pick. “So many people think picking is just about moving the pick up and down,” he says. “But you’ve also got to think about how to kill the string’s vibration to give the line articulation. On a riff like the one from ‘Hanger 18,’ I’m not really palm-muting the D string with my right hand; I do it all with pick articulation.”

Mustaine explains that this involves playing in a strict staccato fashion. “The note dies when the pick touches the string again,” he says. Furthermore, it requires using less of the guitar pick’s point. “When I’m really pedaling, the amount of pick sticking out from my fingers is minute [PHOTO D],” says Mustaine. “But when I’m doing percussive stuff, like ‘Train of Consequences,' I slide my fingers away from the tip of the pick [PHOTO E].”

In conclusion, Mustaine offers this advice: “I think the secret to accurate picking is slowly speeding up. It’s really easy to play rhythm super fast, but with most guitarists, if you slow down their recordings you’ll see that they aren’t very accurate at all. Most of the time they’re terrible. If you want to be fast and accurate, learn your rhythm parts by playing them slow and then gradually bring them up to speed, concentrating the whole time on being accurate. There is no other way.”

CHAPTER II “No Pain, No Gain”: Warming Up

As Lamb of God’s Willie Adler has already stated, warming up for an hour or more is vital for “Sport Metal” participants. “We’ve got some riffs similar to this that are hard as shit,” he says while playing FIGURE 2:1. “So I have to warm up for an hour or more before every show, mainly by playing the riffs in our set that I find the most demanding. I work on my picking speed and stamina by doing simple, quick chugs with triplets [gallops] thrown in [FIGURES 2:2a and b], repeating them over and over and speeding them up as fast as I can. I’ll also do string jumping and wide-stretch riffs [PHOTO F and FIGURE 2:3].”

Michael Amott has a similar and equally lengthy pre-gig warm up. Two Arch Enemy riffs he often uses in this ritual are from “I Am Legend” (FIGURE 2:5) and “Nemesis” (FIGURE 2:6).

FIGURE 2:7 is a cool, off-kilter offering from Trivium’s Matt Heafy that uses all six strings, “gets all your fingers working and also gets a gallop pick going.”

FIGURE 2:8 is from Heafy’s bandmate, Corey Beaulieu, and is a great F# minor example of “getting a picking pattern going and then throwing in a same-key, scale-type run to make it more interesting,” a ploy endorsed by Dragonforce.

This section closes with a riff offered by Fredrik Akesson of Arch Enemy. “This is a rhythm riff I came up with [FIGURE 2:9]. It’s got gallops in the first part and 16th notes and octaves in the second part. I also use my second finger to fret the bass notes on the bottom string [PHOTO K].”

CHAPTER 3 Lead Workout I: Speed Picking

There’s only one way to master this: “Practice…a lot of fucking practice,” says Megadeth’s Glen Drover. “It takes dedication and a sense that you’re never totally comfortable with your skill level. That’s absolutely a healthy attitude for growth as a guitarist.” Drover then proceeds to show us three simple “start out slowly and build up speed sensibly” alternate (down-up) picking exercises in E minor, FIGURE 3:4 a–c , that enable you to focus on your picking technique and “really get the blood pumping.”

Once you’ve paid your dues practicing these essential chop builders, you’re ready for the big leagues and FIGURE 3:5, a blistering, exotic-sounding E minor based workout from Akesson that involves the “Hungarian scale [FIGURE 3:6] combined with some chromatic stuff and alternate picking all the way.” FIGURE 3:7 is a simpler but equally effective E minor, Hungarian-spiced lick.

CHAPTER 4 Lead Workout II: Sweep Picking Arpeggios

Sweep picking is probably the most famous shred technique out there. Yngwie Malmsteen is its undisputed master and the guy who put it on the metal map. But as he explains, most players don’t know or employ the necessary rules.

“Most guitarists have a general idea of how to approximate the technique, but only a few do it correctly,” he says. “The rest of them let the notes ring too long or try to play too fast and sacrifice precision and clarity. Either way, it sounds like shit.” As he explains, the only way to correct these errors is to separate the right- and left-hand components of sweep picking, master them separately and then coordinate them with one another. Of course, it’s not easy. You’ll have to put in a lot of practice time to get it right.

To get a feel for the right-hand picking technique, says Yngwie, “You have to let the pick ‘fall’ from string to string, as if you were strumming a chord. It’s important that you don’t separate the pick strokes. When executing an upward sweep, drag the pick upward over the strings in one fluid motion. Again, it’s imperative that you don’t use individual upstrokes.”

The fret-hand component is equally important. “You need to mute each string with the fret-hand immediately after picking it by lightly lifting or ‘rolling’ your fretting finger to keep the notes from ‘bleeding’ into one another and sounding like a strummed chord.”

Heeding Yngwie’s words, work on FIGURE 4:4, a three-string A minor arpeggio from Trivium’s Matt Heafy. Once you’ve mastered that, check out the more challenging five-string version he offers in FIGURE 4:5. As Heafy says, “It’s all a matter of starting them off really slow and working your way up.” When you have those under your belt, try FIGURE 4:10, Fredrik Akesson’s slippery Bm7f5 diminished arpeggio (B D F A) that continually goes back on itself and repeats.

CHAPTER 5 Lead Workout III: Legato Leads

“Legato” is a fancy Italian musical term for “smooth.” For shred guitarists, playing legato requires using numerous hammer-on and pull-off combinations to make lines sound as smooth as possible. Once again, there is no magic shortcut. Mastering this way of playing will take practice, and lots of it.

When pulling off, pull the string slightly in toward the palm. This will help keep the string vibrating and prevent the note from dying. When you’re ready, check out the molten-lava example from Glen Drover in the key of F# minor shown in FIGURE 5:5 and the demented, diminished-flavored FIGURE 5:7, a lick inspired by what Glen calls the “Randy Rhoads diminished run” (FIGURE 5:6) And don’t be afraid to break these phrases into “bite-size chunks” and chew them slowly.

CHAPTER 6 Lead Workout IV: Pentatonic Power

With sweep arpeggios, diminished licks and Hungarian scales being tossed about, let’s not forget the almighty minor pentatonic and blues scales. Sure, they’re simple and ubiquitous, but these five- and six-note scales are responsible for more great metal riffs and leads than all other scales combined. Sometimes, the best way to break up all the sweep-picking, legato and speed-picked madness is with a burst of pentatonic purity or ballsy blues.

Check out Michael Amott’s simple but effective E minor blues scale (E G A Bb B D) wide-stretch burst in FIGURE 6:5a. As he correctly points out, it’s merely an extension of the more common E minor pentatonic (E G A B D) cliché shown in the first half of FIGURE 6:5b, but it definitely makes a mark.

The undeniable impact of pentatonic and blues scales is illustrated perfectly in FIGURE 6:6, a brilliant blast from Dave Mustaine. Similar to a lead he plays in “Holy Wars,” this is a textbook example of “less is more.” As he points out, his wide-stretch, six-bar chromatic climb is made even more climactic by the fact that there’s an “almost subliminal overtone from the high E string because that string is also fretted while I’m fretting the G and B strings.”

CONCLUSION: The Journey Never Ends

For every serious guitarist, playing the guitar is a lifetime achievement. As Mark Morton wisely notes, “There’s no time spent playing guitar that’s wasted time."

Simply put, Axemen of Sweden, an upcoming film, is a documentary about Swedish guitar heroes.

The film features appearances by Fredrik Åkesson (Opeth), Kee Marcello (Europe), John Norum (Europe), Mattias IA Eklundh (Freak Kitchen), Per Nilsson (Scar Symmetry), Jessica Gardlund and more.

To be honest, we don't know a lot about this just-announced project. However, be sure to stay tuned for details and follow along at axemenofsweden.com and the project's new Facebook page.

Below, check out a few shred=packed trailers for the film, starting off with a clip that features guitarist Jessica Gardlund. Enjoy!

Jessica Gardlund

Fredrik Åkesson (Opeth)

Mattias IA Eklundh

John Norum (Europe)

Opeth are streaming their new album, Pale Communion, and you can check it out right here.

The album will be released August 25 by Roadrunner Records.

Opeth recently announced details of their return to North America for a coast-to-coast co-headline run with In Flames. The nationwide trek, which will also feature support from Red Fang, is set to get under way December 3 at the Riviera Theatre in Chicago and traverse North America through the end of the month.

HEAR OPETH'S NEW ALBUM HERE.

For more details and ticket information visit opeth.com.

2014 CO-HEADLINE TOUR WITH IN FLAMES

• DECEMBER
• 3 Chicago, IL Riviera Theatre
• 4 Minneapolis, MN Mill City Nights
• 5 Omaha, NE Sokol Auditorium
• 6 Denver, CO Ogden Theatre
• 8 San Francisco, CA Warfield Theatre
• 9 Los Angeles, CA Hollywood Palladium
• 10 Tempe, AZ The Marquee
• 12 Houston, TX Warehouse Live Ballroom
• 13 Dallas, TX Gas Monkey Live
• 15 Atlanta, GA The Tabernacle
• 17 Philadelphia, PA Electric Factory
• 18 New York, NY Terminal 5
• 19 Worcester, MA The Palladium
• 20 Montreal, QC Metropolis
• 21 Toronto, ON Kool Haus

Opeth have debuted "Eternal Rains," the second single off their new album, Pale Communion. You can hear the song below.

As always, be sure to tell us what you think in the comments or on Facebook!

"Eternal Rains" follows the album's first single, "Cusp of Eternity," which was first heard two months ago. Pale Communion is set for an August 26 release via Roadrunner Records.

Check the song out here:

Mikael Akerfeldt of Opeth chooses (and discusses) the record that changed his life.

Camel
Moon Madness (1976)

“I was already in my twenties when I first heard it. I was working at a record store in Stockholm at the time, and one of my co-workers, who was in his early forties, suggested I check out Camel.

"I bought a couple of their albums on second-hand vinyl, including Moon Madness and The Snowgoose, and took them home on a lunch break. I was floored by Moon Madness and especially by Andy Latimer’s guitar playing. It was just what I’d been looking for—finally, someone to copy! I had always leaned toward hard-rock players like Blackmore, but this was something new. It was so heartfelt and emotional, and every note felt like it served a purpose.

“I was also amazed by the compositions, as well as the solos, and of course, Latimer’s guitar tone. One of the best guitar solos is in a song called ‘Lunar Sea.’ It’s long and fantastically executed. He really builds it to a splendid climax. That solo that has highly influenced me. In fact, there’s a song on our new album, Ghost Reveries, called ‘The Baying of the Hounds,’ and my solo on it definitely has Andy’s sound and his way of building up the drama of solos.

"Also, on our new track ‘Beneath the Mire,’ there’s a unison part played by me on guitar and by keyboardist Per Wiberg on the Moog synthesizer, and it sounds very Camel-esque. You listen to that and you think, Well, it’s Camel!”

Opeth have premiered a new song, "Cusp of Eternity," and you can check it out below.

"Cusp of Eternity" is the first single to be released from the band's new album, Pale Communion, which will be released August 26 via Roadrunner Records.

Have a listen and let us know what you think of it in the comments below or on Facebook!

Swedish progressive metal stalwarts Opeth will soon release their still-untitled 11th studio album, the follow-up to 2011's Heritage, which saw the band veer toward an organic Seventies hard rock vibe.

While the new album continues along the same path, it offers some interesting variations.

I recently caught up with Opeth's Mikael Akerfeldt, who discussed the album in detail, its production and gear setup — and his newly acquired Gibson Flying V.

Check out part 1 of the conversation on Metal Assault here, and read the second part below.

GUITAR WORLD: You’ve gone for an old-school production style on this album, a style that was prominent on a lot of Seventies and Eighties albums. What's the story behind that?

In our genre, or in the metal scene, I think most bands tend to go for a really modern, contemporary metal sound, which is cool, I guess, but it’s not something we like so much. It fits our music better to do it a bit more old-school and to have more of an organic, warmer sound. That’s what we’re opting for on this album, and we did that on the last one too.

Aside from the production, what kind of gear did you use to achieve that sound?

Guitar-wise, we had a bunch of Marshalls. We’re endorsed by Marshall. The amp we ended up using the most was the Yngwie Malmsteen signature model, mainly for the rhythms. We also had a Marhsall Bluesbreaker combo that sounded fantastic. Then we also had the Joe Satriani signature head and 1960 cabs. We had two of those, but I think we ended up using only one of them.

Guitar-wise, everything came from PRS. I also played on a newly acquired Gibson Flying V, a ’79 — and a couple of Strats. I have a ’68 Custom Shop acrylic Strat that sounded great and a ’62 Strat I picked up and put the body and the pickups together myself. I left it to a guitar shop that has one of those plec machines, which gave it a really, really nice setup.

Frederik also used his old Gibson Junior P90. Oh, and the acoustic parts were played on the PRS Angelus. Frederik and I have one each of those and we use that for all acoustics. So we have a bunch of stuff and some pedals. But we kept pretty simple with a nice, easy setup, and Frederik was really active in setting up the sound. He’s pickier and pays more attention to detail than I do. So he was really bossing me around for the sound of the guitars.

You mentioned a Gibson Flying V. Is that something you’ve even used in the past — ever?

No. I have a ’67 reissue that’s just been collecting dust and I hadn’t been playing that one much, but then I bought this white one because I’m a big Accept and Scorpions fan. I found it on eBay. The guy sold it from Hawaii, I got it and played it, and it was amazing. Frederik absolutely loved it too. We ended up playing a little bit of the new music with it.

Are you going to use that live as well?

No, we’re endorsed by PRS so when we play live we only play PRS guitars. But you never know. If there was a song that absolutely needed a V or whatever it might be, of course I would play it. PRS isn't going to cut our throats if we play another brand, but we are really, really happy with PRS. They’ve basically given us all we need when it comes to guitars. To this day we’ve never had a problem with any of their guitars. I think we’ll just stick to playing PRS live and support them.

The acoustic guitar is something that doesn't get mentioned enough, especially in terms of your sound.

I used to work at a guitar shop in Stockholm, and we only sold acoustic guitars. That’s where I developed my love for the acoustic guitar. I started working there before we recorded the first album, so I wrote a lot of music on acoustic guitars and wrote a lot of acoustic parts. That’s kind of escalated with time, and now, I don’t want to draw comparisons with Led Zeppelin or anyone like that, but I think we are as much an acoustic band as we are an electric band these days.

When it comes to playing live, how do you deal with delivering the acoustic parts amid the amplified instruments? Is it more difficult than it looks?

It’s pretty hard, actually. We started doing it just in recent tours. In the past, if we had an acoustic section, we just played it with clean electric guitars. But during the last couple of tours, we’ve actually been playing acoustic guitars on stage. Sometimes it’s like a switch in the middle of a song, which can’t be possible for us unless we have stands and stuff like that, which looks too pretentious to be honest, so we don’t do that.

But if there’s time to switch guitars, we will do that. We also have a section of the show where we play a few acoustic songs in a row, so obviously we switch to acoustic guitars to do those songs. But generally, if we can’t switch guitars in the middle of the song, we just play with clean electric guitars.

When will the new album be released? And you don't have a titled for it, right?

No, we don’t have a title, but we’ll probably have that within the next week or so. And the release, from what I've heard, if we deliver everything on time, it’s going to be out in June. That’s what I know.

June? I thought it’d be a fall release.

No, they wanted to get it out in time for some of the summer festivals we’re doing in Europe. But it all comes down to us, and we ultimately have to deliver everything. But the album is done, sequenced and mastered. We just have to come up with the title and the artwork, and we’ll be set to go.

After the festivals, you’ll be getting on a full touring cycle, correct?

Yeah. It still feels a bit early for me to think about touring, but that’s the reality, I guess. We’ve talked about starting in Europe in the fall, September/October or something like that, and then just doing the whole thing again like we always have, come back and play North America and play wherever we can, wherever there’s demand and play as much as we can.

Andrew Bansal is a writer who has been running his own website, Metal Assault, since early 2010, and has been prolific in covering the hard rock and heavy metal scene by posting interviews, news, reviews and pictures on his website — with the help of a small group of people. He briefly moved away from the Los Angeles scene and explored metal in India, but he is now back in LA continuing from where he left off.

Swedish progressive metal outfit Opeth have just announced a headlining North American tour that's set to kick off April 18 in Buffalo, New York. Dates for the 30-city trek can be found below.

The second stop on the tour will see Opeth join an all-star roster of bands — including Anthrax, Suicidal Tendencies and Hatebreed — at the New England Metal & Hardcore festival. Also of note is the Clifton Park, New York show in April 28, which is set to feature a special appearance from Mikael Akerfeldt's Storm Corrosion collaborator Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree.

Opeth are wrapping up touring activities this year in support of 2011's Heritage. The album was critically lauded, but proved divisive to some fans for its prog-rock leaning and lack of harsh vocals.

"I'm not really interested in those type of vocals these days," Akerfeldt told Guitar World in 2011. "I've done them for a long time and I feel that I can't take it further. If I can't develop something, I tend to lose interest in it."

He continued, "But that's our roots, so to speak. It's not like I'm turning my back on that, but I'm letting the music guide what type of vocals I'm gonna use. So I can't say, but my screams aren't getting better. On the contrary, I think I'm a worse screamer than I used to be."

Opeth are expected to commence work on the follow-up to Heritage during 2013.

Opeth 2013 Headlining Tour Dates:

• 4/18 — The Town Ballroom — Buffalo, NY
• 4/20 — New England Metal & Hardcore Festival — Worcester, MA
• 4/21 — Capitole — Quebec City, QC
• 4/23 — Halifax Forum — Halifax, NS
• 4/24 — Casino New Brunswick — Moncton, NB
• 4/26 — Guelph Concert Theatre — Guelph, ON
• 4/27 — Crocodile Rock — Allentown, PA
• 4/28 — Upstate Concert Hall — Clifton Park, NY
• 4/29 — Music Hall of Williamsburg — Brooklyn, NY
• 4/30 — NorVa Theater — Norfolk, VA
• 5/2 — Culture Room — Ft. Lauderdale, FL
• 5/3 — State Theatre — St. Petersburg, FL
• 5/4 — Georgia Theatre — Athens, GA
• 5/5 — Lincoln Theatre — Raleigh, NC
• 5/6 — The Orange Peel — Asheville, NC
• 5/8 — Buster’s Billiards & Backroom — Lexington, KY
• 5/9 — The Vogue — Indianapolis, IN
• 5/10 — The Machine Shop — Flint, MI
• 5/11 — Mojoe’s — Joliet, IL
• 5/12 — House of Blues — Cleveland, OH
• 5/14 — The Venue — Fargo, ND
• 5/15 — Wooly’s — Des Moines, IA
• 5/16 — Pop’s — Sauget, IL
• 5/17 — Bourbon Theatre — Lincoln, NE
• 5/18 — Cain’s Ballroom — Tulsa, OK
• 5/20 — Fox Theatre — Boulder, CO
• 5/21 — Fox Theatre — Boulder, CO
• 5/23 — Rialto Theatre — Tucson, AZ
• 5/24 — The Roxy — Los Angeles, CA
• 5/25 — The Canyon Club — Agoura Hills, CA
• 5/26 — The Catalyst — Santa Cruz, CA

This past Saturday was Record Store Day, a "holiday" in which music fans are encouraged to forego the big-box retailers in favor of their locally owned record shops.

While on tour with Mastodon as part of the Heritage/Hunter tour (review and photo gallery here), Opeth's Mikael Akerfeldt took some time to not only do some record shopping, but sit down and chat about his extensive collection, as well as his love for '70s prog.

To find out the most Akerfeldt has ever paid for a record — as well as get the answer to a burning Genesis question — check out the video below.

Akerfeldt and Porcupine Tree's Steven Wilson will release the debut album from their new band Storm Corrosion on May 8 via Roadrunner Records. You can listen to the first single, "Drag Ropes," here.

Storm Corrosion — the long-awaited project from Opeth's Mikael Akerfeldt and Porcupine Tree's Steven Wislon — have just premiered their first-ever music video for the track "Drag Ropes." You can view the Jess Cope-directed clip below.

Last month, we debuted an exclusive video featuring Akerfeldt discussing the progression from Opeth's latest album, Heritage, to the Storm Corrosion album, a progression guitarist Steven Wilson feels is more logical than one might think.

"If you'd asked me three months ago about the music, I would have said, 'Expect the last thing you would expect,'" said Wilson. "But actually, now that Heritage and Grace For Drowning have come out, I don't think it's going to be that much of a shock to people, because it's almost like a third part of the trilogy, in a way."

The eponymous debut album from Storm Corrosion is out May 8 via Roadrunner Records.

Well before it was officially announced, the co-headlining tour — now dubbed Heritage/Hunter — featuring Mastodon and Opeth was already generating tour-of-the-year-level buzz around the rock/metal community.

While the three bands are exceedingly different in style, their respective fan bases have a surprising overlap, save for maybe the most prog-happy of Opeth's fans and the most mainstream of Mastodon's.

Swedish cult rockers Ghost opened the show last Wednesday night at New York City's Roseland Ballroom, and it's a testament to their burgeoning popularity that a good majority of the crowd was present and at full attention when they took the stage, kicking things off with "Con Clavi Con Dio" from their sole studio album, Opus Eponymous.

It was strange seeing Ghost in such a large venue, especially given how at home they seem in the cramped quarters of smaller stages like the one at The Studio at Webster Hall. Lacking their typical blacklight setup, which will make a small venue feel like a sinister cathedral, enigmatic frontman Papa Emiretus — who appears as some sort of Satanic pope, for the uninitiated among you — can still captivate a crowd, gimmick or not. (Although the gimmick certainly helps.)

The band played an abbreviated version of their regular set, punctuated by fan favorites like "Prime Mover" and "Satan Prayer," although their cover of The Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun" was sorely missed.

Taking turns closing each night of the tour, the task of playing first fell on Opeth on this occasion, and they got things started with "Devil's Orchard," the proggy, odd-metered first single from the band's latest album, Heritage (buy on iTunes). It generated a surprisingly loud sing-along for the chorus of "God is dead."

After "I Feel the Dark" — also from Heritage — frontman Mikael Akerfeldt addressed the crowd in his typical dry fashion, saying, "Hi. We're Opeth. From Sweden. We're going to play some music for you. And that's it," before playfully pointing to the projection screens behind him and adding, "And also we have some movies for you."

Perhaps responding to the crowd's awkward attempt to mosh during the '70s prog-inspired Heritage material, you could see a sly smile on the face of Akerfeldt as the band launched into the 10-minute-plus "The Grand Conjuration" from 2005's Ghost Reveries — the first track in their set to feature the death-metal growls missing from their last album, and indeed their last headlining tour.

("My screams aren't getting better," Akerfeldt told us in September of last year. "On the contrary, I think I'm a worse screamer than I used to be." A lot of fans at Roseland that night would humbly disagree.)

Likely owing to his recent propensity for clean vocals, Akerfeldt's voice sounded spot on, effortlessly tackling some of the more adventurous melodies on Heritage before the night took a heavy turn with the end of their set.

Taking an even more surprising turn, the band closed with "Demon of the Fall" from 1998's My Arms, Your Hearse, a track that hasn't been played live since 2010.

Mastodon took the stage last, managing to pack 17 songs into an exceedingly energetic set, thanks mostly to the more streamlined approach they took with their latest album, The Hunter (buy on iTunes), which, minus "Creature Lives," was played in its entirety. (The fact that many music critics doubted whether or not Mastodon could pull off The Hunter's vocals live has now been firmly relegated to being a laughable footnote in the band's history.)

"Black Tongue" is a natural live opener, the octave-heavy main riff and thundering toms setting the mood for what was to be a practically non-stop barrage of music from the Atlanta-based band.

Mastodon's songs don't have hooks so much as muscular, sinewy tendrils that wrap around your ankles and pull you into the deep end. While the comparatively abbreviated numbers in the evening's setlist don't merit the (over)use of the word "epic" quite as much as some of their older material, by the time the band closed out the show with the almost-pretty "The Sparrow," it was hard not to feel like you had been a part of something grand in scale, band and audience acting together to do a whole mess of heavy lifting.

Don't get what I mean? Go see for yourself.

Photo: Karla Mera

Storm Corrosion — the new project featuring Opeth's Mikael Akerfeldt and Porcupine Tree's Steven Wilson — have posted the first video in a series that will see them answering fan-submitted questions. Watch it below.

Storm Corrosion will release their eponymous debut album on May 8 via Roadrunner Records.

The band promise that the album is something completely different than anything they've done before, with Mikael Akerfedlt even saying that it would feature no distorted guitars.

"The funny thing is that the music we're making together is actually nothing like either of us made before," Steven Wilson said back in 2011. "Because I think we both had this idea of this kind of music that we knew we couldn't get our bands to play, but that we both kind of understood where we were coming from. 'Cause we have this kind of passion [for] very experimental, obscure records, almost orchestral in their scope. And we wanted to make a record like that for a long time."

It's been a prog metal fan's dream album-in-the-making for a long time, but we're now just a month and change away from the release of Storm Corrosion, the eponymous debut album from the new project from Opeth's Mikael Akerfeldt and Porcupine Tree's Steven Wilson.

In the below video, Mikael Akerfeldt talks at-length about the chances he took with the new Opeth album, Heritage, and how that translates to Storm Corrosion, an album that takes even more chances, and will likely leave many metal fans scratching their heads.

"The funny thing is that the music we're making together is actually nothing like either of us made before," Steven Wilson said back in 2011. "Because I think we both had this idea of this kind of music that we knew we couldn't get our bands to play, but that we both kind of understood where we were coming from. 'Cause we have this kind of passion [for] very experimental, obscure records, almost orchestral in their scope. And we wanted to make a record like that for a long time."

Storm Corrosion is out May 8 via Roadrunner Records. You can pre-order the album right now here.

Storm Corrosion -- the new project featuring Opeth's Mikael Akerfeldt and Porcupine Tree's Steven Wilson -- were previously set to release their eponymous debut on April 24, but the release has been pushed back to May 8.

The album is set to feature six tracks, three of which are around 10 minutes long. You can view the track listing below.

"The funny thing is that the music we're making together is actually nothing like either of us made before," Wilson said last year of the album. "Because I think we both had this idea of this kind of music that we knew we couldn't get our bands to play, but that we both kind of understood where we were coming from. 'Cause we have this kind of passion [for] very experimental, obscure records, almost orchestral in their scope. And we wanted to make a record like that for a long time."

Wilson has also said, to the surprise of many, that there would be "no distorted guitars" on the record.

Storm Corrosion track listing:

• 01. Drag Ropes (9:52)
• 02. Storm Corrosion (10:12)
• 03. Hag (6:28)
• 04. Happy (4:53)
• 05. Lock Howl (6:09)
• 06. Ljudet Innan (10:20)

Storm Corrosion, the long-awaited debut album from Steven Wilson and Opeth's Mikael Akerfeldt, now has an official release. The group's eponymous debut album will be released on April 24 via Roadrunner Records.

According to an official press release, the album can best be described as "enchanting, orchestral, ambient, epic (half the album’s tracks clock in around the 10-minute mark.)"

In a recent interview, Steven Wilson was asked if the album would sound like what fans would expect a collaboration between the two prog rockers would.

"It’s very hard to describe this music as it is so different from most things around right now (at least as far as I know)," said Wilson. "I said it was the 'opposite of metal' because I think a lot of people might have assumed from the two people involved that this would be some kind of progressive / metal thing, but in fact it’s quite a minimal album with a lot of space and beauty, orchestral and organic, hardly any drums and no distorted guitars – 'twisted beautiful' is the best way I can describe it."

"Some of the music on this record I think is the most beautiful music I have participated on ever,” adds Åkerfeldt. “There's some magical sections on there. Musically I think we've created something earthy, a bit frightening, exhausting, profound and rather intense. All at the same time. I can safely say I don't know any other band or artist that sounds anything like Storm Corrosion. I guess that was also one of our goals, so to speak.”

2012 will finally see the release of the long-awaited collaboration between Porcupine Tree's Steven Wilson and Opeth's Mikael Akerfeldt. The two will release their self-titled debut album as Storm Corrosion this year, and from what the two have said so far, it may not be exactly what fans are expecting.

As part of an online fan Q&A with StarsDie.com, Wilson was asked to expand on his recent statement that the album was "the opposite of metal."

"It’s very hard to describe this music as it is so different from most things around right now (at least as far as I know)," said Wilson. "I said it was the 'opposite of metal' because I think a lot of people might have assumed from the two people involved that this would be some kind of progressive / metal thing, but in fact it’s quite a minimal album with a lot of space and beauty, orchestral and organic, hardly any drums and no distorted guitars – 'twisted beautiful' is the best way I can describe it."

Storm Corrosion is tentatively scheduled for an April release through Roadrunner Records.

The February 2012 issue of Guitar World magazine is available now at the Guitar World Online Store.

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, Roger Waters and Nick Mason tell the story behind the making of Meddle and Wish You Were Here, the two prog-rock classics that book-ended their 1973 masterpiece, The Dark Side of the Moon.

The 1971 album Meddle set the group on the path to success, while 1975’s Wish You Were Here cemented the band’s reputation for creating groundbreaking multimedia arena shows.

The new issue also includes a free poster of previously unseen Pink Floyd artwork by Storm Thorgerson, who designed many of the group’s album covers.

Other features in this issue include:

• The Black Keys: Guitarist Dan Auerbach gets his motor running for an in-depth discussion about the group’s latest album, El Camino.

• Opeth: Mikael Akerfeldt and Fredrik Akesson tell how Opeth incurred the wrath of die-hard modern metal fans with their latest album, Heritage.

• Korn: On The Path of Totality, Korn merge heavy riffs with dubstep to take their innovative sound even further off the map.

• 50 Years of Ernie Ball: When it came to guitar strings, Ernie Ball was a game changer who revolutionized the industry. As his company turns 50, it looks back at his history and looks ahead to a yearlong celebration of innovative new products.

• Soundcheck: Yamaha A1M and A3R A Series acoustic-electric guitars, Boss BC-2 Combo Drive and FB-2 Feedbacker/Booster pedals, Peavey Devin Townsend Signature PXD Vicious seven-string baritone, EMG James Hetfield Signature pickups and much more!

For more information or to order, head to the Guitar World Online Store.

"This was definitely a weird year for music."

That's how Guitar World Editor-In-Chief Brad Tolinski started off his best-of list for 2011, and it seems a fitting beginning for this one as well.

It's hard to know how 2011 will be remembered, especially given that we're still more than a week away from the ball dropping in Times Square to usher in 2012.

Maybe it's the prophecies derived from an ancient Mayan calendar or simply a stacked lineup of releases -- Black Sabbath, Van Halen, Lamb of God, Soungarden, ZZ Top and Rush, to name a few -- but it feels like 2012 has been looming over us all year long.

Regardless, this was a good year for music, in spite of what many would have you believe. Before you head into 2012 drooling over one of the most anticipated release years ever, let's look back at the 50 best albums of 2011.

Is it just me, or is an album's release date becoming less and less relevant?

I'm not just talking about piracy or over-saturation of the market leading to release dates that just don't feel as special -- though even at my relatively young age, I can fondly remember waiting in line at FYE to buy a new album. I'm saying that the way we consume music is changing in such a way that makes when an album came out nearly irrelevant.

Maybe it's the fact that the Internet has made terms like "obscure" obsolete, or how "old" no longer means "out of print," but I kind of dig how all music seems to sort of exist in this weird, atemporal ether of "now." Maybe 2011 is the time David Kusek wrote about in The Future of Music, in which he envisioned "a future in which music will be like water: ubiquitous and free-flowing."

Or maybe I'm just lazy and all that is just an excuse for why I tried to cheat in my choice for No. 1 ...

Earlier this year, Down announced that they will record four new EPs instead of a full-length album, setting off a ton of speculation about how the album's days may be numbered, thanks to any number of culprits, from our download-centric culture to the impatience of fans.

While we're not going to proclaim the death of the album format, it does seem like more and more bands are finding ways to turn EPs into viable artistic statements as opposed to stopgaps between records.

On the metal front, Cynic, Between the Buried and Me and Periphery all put out EPs this year that feel fully realized, without a hint of the "Let's save the good songs for the next record" attitude that turns many music lovers off to the idea of EPs in the first place.

In the late '90s and early '00s, bands seemed to drift into longer and longer album cycles, but with recording budgets shrinking and the demand for new music growing, a lot of bands are turning to the EP to stay fresh in fans' minds.

It could be that the EP is the way of the future, but for now we can only speculate and look back at the best this year had to offer.

MTV may have gone awry decades ago, but that doesn't mean the music video isn't alive and well in 2011.

For a while, it seemed the art form might be on its way out, with the rise of reality programming on former music channels, but the music video has persevered, and it's finally unlocked the potential of the Internet to once again become a viable -- and powerful -- form of promotion.

And we had some good ones this year, including the return of Primus, a beach party with Rammstein and a pair of excellent shorts from the Foo Fighters.

What video took home the No. 1 spot? Read on to find out!

10. Behemoth - "Lucifer"

As dark as this video is, we can't help but smile knowing it marks a healthy return Behemoth mainman Adam "Nergal" Darski, who this year played his first show with Behemoth since undergoing treatment for leukemia.

09. Five Finger Death Punch - "Under and Over It"

Five Finger Death Punch were all about making a stir this year, so it's no surprise that the band who named their new album American Capitalist used the album's lead video to cram in every excess imagineable.

08. Radiohead - "Lotus Flower"

A viral sensation due to the sheer prowess of Thom Yorke's crazy dancing, the "Lotus Flower" video created countless spinoffs as YouTubers competed to see who could best sync up Yorke's unorthodox dance moves to hilariously out-of-context music.

07. Opeth - "The Devil's Orchard"

This spaced-out, vaguely German-expressionist clip for "The Devil's Orchard" seems a perfect fit for the vintage prog vision of Opeth mastermind Mikael Akerfeldt.

06. Steel Panther - "If You Really, Really Love Me"

Say what you will about Steel Panther, but these guys just get the eighties. Steel Panther could have taken this video to the ridiculous extremes of the song's lyrics, but instead they went for a playful take on the feel of big ballad videos of days gone by and nailed it.

05. Primus - "Tragedy's A' Comin'"

While it will never eclipse the cinematic masterpiece that is "Wynona's Big Brown Beaver," the video for "Tragedy's A' Comin'" is a welcome return for Les Claypool and Co. Only the zany minds behind tracks like "Jilly's on Smack" and "The Last Salmon Man" could cook up a scene involving a hungry astronaut and a reluctant lobster.

04. Rammstein - "Mein Land"

Is there any German industrial metal band you'd rather have a beach party with than Rammstein? We didn't think so.

03. Megadeth - "Public Enemy No. 1"

It's safe to say when most of us saw the early screen caps of this video featuring the Megadeth guys in the Old West, we thought the final product might be a little more Tombstone and a little less Dunston Checks In.

02. Mastodon - "Deathbound"

According to Adult Swim, "We asked Mastodon for a song for our Adult Swim Singles Program. When they sent us this incredible jam, we knew we had to make a video for it. We called our friends at Authority Films and the first thing they thought was 'puppets!'" It's hard to beat the acid-tinged feel of Mastodon's other music video this year, "Curl of the Burl," but when it came time to decide which video made the list, we had to side with the puppets.

01. Foo Fighters - "Walk"

It was hard to choose this over the "White Limo" video -- or for that matter the "Hot Buns" tour promo video -- or the ensuing live footage of the Foos serenading protesters from the Westboro Baptist Church -- or the one where Dave Grohl kicks someone out of a show ... . The hell with it, "Walk" is our No. 1 video of 2011, but let's take the rest of this article to celebrate all the great Foo-tage from 2011.

These videos are bonus content related to the Holiday 2011 issue of Guitar World. For full print reviews, lesson tabs and more, look for the Holiday 2011 issue of Guitar World on newsstands now, or purchase this issue in our online store here.

In the following video, Guitar World's Andy Aledort shows you how to play the intro to "Folklore" from Opeth's new album, Heritage.

For individual download links to these videos, click here. For more info, or to buy the new issue, head to the Guitar World Online Store.Featured Lesson Videos• In Deep with The Beatles: Intro and "Something" guitar solo, "Blackbird","Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds"
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These videos are bonus content related to the Holiday 2011 issue of Guitar World. Check out this month's issue for full tabs, transcriptions and lessons.