In the English Summer sunshine, backstage at Download Festival 2025, Rock Sins were delighted to catch up with Opeth master shredder and lead guitarist Fredrik Akesson. We were able to cover many topics with Fred, from returning to the bands’ signature growing vocals, the multiple moving parts and guests of their recent album The Last Will and Testament and having dinner with heavy metal royalty! Read on for the full details….
RS: You have been in Opeth for almost two decades now; You have played Download and Donington many times, is Download somewhere you look forward to coming back to when you see it is on the schedule?
Fred: Yeah of course! You know I think it is the first time that it didn’t rain! Laughs It’s good coming back, there is always a cool vibe here. I would prefer it if we could play a longer set of course, but hey, that’s the way it works at festivals sometimes.
RS: You mentioned about it being dry – would you prefer to play in the evening in the dark? Your music is very atmospheric, do you mind playing in the daylight at festivals or would you rather play in the evening?
Fred: Actually the worst thing is when you have direct sunlight in your face! That is painful! Darkness would be ideal because of the light show and as you mentioned the dynamics of things, but it is fine. You roll with the punches, you get up there and try to do as good as you can.
RS: You mentioned you would prefer to have a longer set – with the new album and the story it tells, is it very hard for you guys to pick out individual tracks from it to put into something like a festival set?
Fred: No not really, we don’t think about the concept that much, unless that the scenario was that we would play the album in full. So it’s more about how some of these songs will fit with other songs, different keys and tempos and stuff like that. The ones that we can pull off live from the new album as well. Some of these tracks are with big orchestras, and Ian Anderson is more involved than on other tracks, we don’t play with tapes or anything like that. We do have a sampler with Ian’s voice on a couple of tracks, but our drum tech is punching those in so we feel like it’s…legit.
RS: It’s as live as it can be!
Fred: Exactly! We have that kind of outlook that we don’t want to go down that road.
RS: You’ve just led into the next question perfectly, because one you talked about if you could ever end up playing the album in full, but as you’ve also said there are lots of guests on it and extra parts to the album. Playing the album in full with all the people involved, with an orchestra and all the extra parts to it, is that something you guys have talked about doing at all? Is it something you would like to do?
Fred: It has been a frequently asked question from some journalists, we have not planned it, but if we would do it, it would be a one off with guests included. But nothing planned for the moment to do that.
RS: Lots of Opeth’s very significant shows, the 20th anniversary, the 25th anniversary, have all taken place in the UK. So you know there’s an audience here for your special shows should you choose to do it.
Fred: Yeah, you know we feel that we have a close bond with the UK. We’ve done some really memorable shows here for me personally. We played Hammersmith last time for instance, the Royal Albert Hall, the list goes on and on. My favourite would probably be the last time in Hammersmith at The Apollo because we had Bruce Dickinson as our guest. He was sitting up in the balcony and for me, growing up listening to Maiden, he was up there air drumming, it was really amazing.
RS: That is very cool.
Fred: I will never forget that. We have our management here in the UK also, so our bonds are definitely close with the UK.
Obviously something fans, journalists, media, many people talked about for years after you dropped the harsh vocals and went slightly more prog sounding was whether the harsh vocals would come back. Of course that has happened with this new album, was there any one moment where it was something Mikael wanted to do, was it a group decision? Was there a song you’d written where it felt like the time to do it? What was the thought process behind deciding to bring them back in?
Fred: I could sense that he still enjoyed doing the growls because of other older songs live. Of course after we released Heritage there were no songs with any growls and there was a lot of people upset about that. But we held our ground, stood our ground laughs. When it comes to Mikael, I think it has to come from him. If I were to tell him “you have to do growls on the next album”, he would do the opposite laughs. There has to be the right balance, that is the way he works, he needs to find it out on his own. But what we did do is before writing The Last Will and Testament is talk about that we should do something more heavier. The last four were proggier, but still a lot of heavy stuff. We sort of peaked that era on In Cauda Venenum. Bringing back the growl element obviously enhances and after the gap it becomes fresh again. But still it’s not like trying to go back and do Blackwater Park again or Ghost Reveries. Ultimately it is up to the listener to decide what they think. But I really appreciated bringing back that element and its a good balance I think.
RS: Have you found that the new songs fit into the live shows well?
Fred: Yeah! I mean we have done a few tours now. We were over in America last Fall right before the album came out, and on that tour we played two tracks, the ones we are playing today actually, Paragraph 1 and 3. We have been playing others, like the ballad, and also Paragraph 7. We were also here in February in the UK when we played The Roundhouse, and we did a South American tour with Judas Priest and the Scorpions and Europe and Queenscryhe and us, which was amazing! The last show we did was only us and Priest in Mexico City and like Maiden, Priest is what I grew up with. You have to pinch your arm you know…”fuck!” laughs We were actually granted an audience with Rob Halford before the last show in Mexico, and myself and Mikael got to have dinner with Andy Sneap and Ian Hill and Scott Travis. They are cool guys.
RS: That must have been such an experience for you, heroes of your childhood and getting to do things like that must have been very special.
Fred: It is unreal, it really is. A once in a lifetime experience.
RS: You’ve been playing PRS Guitars for a very long time now. That’s a relationship that has continued to evolve over time and obviously you are very happy with that, is there anything in particular that you enjoy about working with them as a company and as providers of your gear?
Fred: It’s like a family thing really. It is thanks to Mikael I play them. Before I joined Opeth I played ESP, when I was in Arch Enemy. But PRS are really trustworthy. The way their gears intonate the tune is really important and how they handle getting bounced around on the road is also very important. Really we are very spoiled. They are giving me free guitars, it is unreal. It would be amazing to do a signature model sometime in the future again. The ones we did way back have now been pulled out (off sale). The last one was….twelve years ago probably. They are a great company. You know we actually played a show once at their factory! We had Paul Smith himself playing in front of us, I don’t know how that came off. There were also a lot of Country Music players, so we very much felt like extreme metal at the time!
RS: To wrap up, what does the rest of the year look like for Opeth, is it Japan and Australia once you finish the European Festival Season?
Fred: We are doing fourteen festivals in total I believe. We are doing the second leg of our European Tour, but that is more countries like Italy, Poland, Czech Republic, couple of German dates, Austria, Switzerland. After that we have a bit of a break and then we are doing New Zealand, Australia and Japan. It’s a busy year, but we have our gaps in-between which is good for family life. Finding a nice balance is important. We have a rule now that we only do three weeks of touring and then we will have a break. Before we used to do seven, eight weeks, home five days and then gone again for another one. A few divorces later, we worked it out! laughs
Opeth are about to start the aforementioned second leg of their European Tour. From there they head to Asia, and in early 2026 they will embark on the second leg of the US tour for their current album The Last Will and Testament (supported by Katatonia). A full list of tour dates and ticket links is available on the official bands’ website.
The most recent Opeth album, The Last Will and Testament, is out now on Reigning Phoenix Music.
Photo of Fredrik Akesson by Terhi Ylimäinen courtesy of Cosa Nostra PR.
