{"id":2447849,"date":"2019-08-22T06:48:36","date_gmt":"2019-08-22T12:48:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=874937"},"modified":"2019-08-22T06:48:36","modified_gmt":"2019-08-22T12:48:36","slug":"the-first-time-opeths-mikael-akerfeldt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/music-news\/the-first-time-opeths-mikael-akerfeldt\/","title":{"rendered":"The First Time: Opeth\u2019s Mikael Akerfeldt"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Mikael \u00c5kerfeldt, leader of celebrated Swedish prog-rock outfit Opeth<\/a>, looks back on the moment he became a metal fan, the time he partied with Abba\u2019s very own Dancing Queen, a song that made him cry, what made him lose faith in contemporary metal, and more in the latest installment of \u201cThe First Time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The singer-guitarist \u2014 whose band ranked on Rolling Stone\u2019<\/em>s Greatest Metal Albums<\/a> list and will release its 13th LP, In Cauda Venenum,<\/em> next month \u2014 vividly remembers the moment metal came into his life. He recalls how he was playing at a friend\u2019s house one day around 1979, when he found a Black Sabbath greatest-hits tape mixed in with cassettes of children\u2019s stories.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember \u2018Iron Man,\u2019<\/a> that song,\u201d he says. \u201cNow I hear it [as] Ozzy [Osbourne] speaking but back then it was like a monster, with that effect: \u2018I am Iron Man.\u2019 And then I was like, whoa, that was amazing. I think that was probably the time I became a metal fan, I would say, with that cassette.\u201d<\/p>\n

He goes on to explain that his parents were only partially on board with his newfound interest. \u201cI wanted to have long hair but my mother would only allow me to have a mullet,\u201d he says. \u201cBusiness in front, party in the back.\u201d He recalls feeling let down when he opened a Christmas gift and instead of the heavy-metal memorabilia he was expecting, he found a back patch featuring the cover of David Bowie\u2019s Let\u2019s Dance<\/em> album. \u201cI love that record, but I didn\u2019t want a back patch of it,\u201d \u00c5kerfeldt says. \u201cI wanted [Mot\u00f6rhead\u2019s] Ace of Spades.<\/em>\u201c<\/p>\n

The singer also discusses the evolution of his appreciation for fellow Swedes Abba, and how he once got to meet one of the members after recording an album in the same studio where the pop stars worked early on. The engineer was tight was Abba singer Agnetha F\u00e4ltskog, and \u00c5kerfeldt ended up at a party with her. He says he was nervous at first, but cigarettes and alcohol helped settle him down, and he eventually struck up a conversation with her. Then the unthinkable happened.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the end, we were all a bit tipsy, and somebody put on a song \u2014 there was a jukebox in there, and they put on these Fifties rock ballads, or whatever, and I got to dance with her, to have a dance with the Dancing Queen,\u201d he says. \u201cNobody believes this story but it\u2019s true.\u201d<\/p>\n

In another segment of the interview, he comments on Opeth\u2019s controversial decision to move away from the more aggressive sound that marked their earlier releases, and how the fan response<\/a> made him ponder the current state of heavy metal<\/a>. \u201cWe put out a record called Heritage<\/em>, which some of our fans absolutely hated, and they figured we\u2019re traitors and it\u2019s not metal, and that had me starting to question what is metal. Because what I hear, it\u2019s not metal to me, some of the contemporary stuff. It\u2019s like boy bands, if you know what I mean \u2014 no aggression, no rawness, no honesty, nothing rebellious about it. \u2026 I\u2019ve been on a permanent leave from contemporary metal since the mid-Nineties, but I still play the Priest records and the Maiden, Scorpions, Deep Purple. I love that stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked about the first time a song made him cry, he confesses that it happens all the time. But he does offer up one instance, when he says he was in a \u201cfragile\u201d state of mind while going through a divorce. \u201cI was going on what I call \u2018old man walks,\u2019 listening to music, and I was playing a Rainbow record, Rainbow Rising,<\/em> the very first song, \u2018Tarot Woman.\u2019<\/a> I was crying, walking and crying.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lastly, the Opeth leader comments on the first time he heard about A$AP Rocky being arrested in his home country. He says he was vaguely aware that the rapper had played a festival in Stockholm that he attended with his daughters, who are hip-hop fans. \u201cIt was in the news that he got arrested,\u201d \u00c5kerfeldt says. \u201cI don\u2019t know who he is. It\u2019s probably good for his career, I would say.\u201d<\/p>\n

Opeth\u2019s In Cauda Venenum<\/em> comes out September 27th in both English and Swedish versions. The band will tour the U.K., Europe, and Australia this fall.<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mikael \u00c5kerfeldt, leader of celebrated Swedish prog-rock outfit Opeth, looks back on the moment he became a metal fan, the time he partied with Abba\u2019s very own Dancing Queen, a song that made him cry, what made him lose faith in contemporary metal, and more in the latest installment of \u201cThe First Time.\u201d The singer-guitarist […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2447849","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-26 14:53:29","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2447849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2447849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2447849\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2447849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2447849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2447849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}