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FORGOTTEN HISTORY: 2 | History Defined

“A lot of metalheads wind up finding prog – but it’s in a lot of their favourite bands already”: Progressive metal has never been healthier, and here’s why

Members of Jinjer, Blood Incantation and Rivers Of Nihil explain the current rapid evolution of a genre that broke out 40 years ago

Metal Hammer

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

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

Metal Hammer

“When are we going to stop with this Pink Floyd stuff and start playing some metal?”: The story of the most ambitious song in death metal history

In 1996, Sweden’s Edge Of Sanity filled an entire album with one winding track, inspired by black metal, melodeath, prog and plenty more. It remains a towering achievement long after the band’s break-up.

Metal Hammer

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"Five middle-aged, slightly hungover geezers miming along to something." Opeth share new band performance video of §1

Swedish prog metallers Opeth share a performance video for The Last Will And Testament's opening track §1

Metal Hammer

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

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

Metal Hammer

“All the time he was ill, he had it in his head that he was going to finish it when he got home. He never made it home. I guess we owed it to him”: Tim Smith’s Cardiacs story will end with final album LSD

Members of the band who influenced Steven WIlson, Radiohead, Opeth, Andy Partridge and more explain what they did and why it mattered

Louder

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

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

Louder

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These 2005 metal albums are so incredible that they should have been chart-toppers

The likes of Trivium and Opeth had banner years in 2005, but these master-strokes proved there should have been a bit more room under the spotlight

Metal Hammer

We got rock and metal's best bands to pick the greatest Ozzy Osbourne (and Black Sabbath) songs ever

Members of Metallica, Guns N' Roses, Halestorm and more choose the best songs featuring the Prince Of Darkness

Metal Hammer

“We wanted to feel that we weren’t in a rush – even though we were. That’s how you end up singing in a sleeping bag”: From a mountain monastery to a cold bus in a snowstorm, the Von Hertzen Brothers’ Nine Lives was tough work

The Finnish brothers created a different working method for their fifth album, but to their surprise the results weren’t much different from the previous four. Which was no bad thing

Metal Hammer

“It’s difficult to hear bass playing in metal, but players like Geezer Butler stand out – they try to do something different with their parts. If they don’t, I usually find it a bit boring”: Opeth’s Martín Méndez names the 5 albums that shaped his sound

The low-end maestro for prog titans Opeth digs deep into fusion and soul as he names his favorite bass records

Guitar World

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

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

Metal Hammer

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

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

Metal Hammer

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

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

Metal Hammer

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Metal Hammer

"It was the ‘giggle grass’, so everything struck me as hysterically funny for about three hours." Grand Magus frontman J.B. Christofferson on laughing fits, Beowulf and heavy metal's next generation

With a stable line-up since the beginning, Sweden's Grand Magus have been staunch defenders of the faith for over 25 years

MusicRadar

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

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

Metal Hammer

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

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

Metal Hammer

“Pigeonhole this band at your own peril”: Why you should adore Katatonia – and where you should start with their enormous back-catalogue

From death/doom majesty to streamlined, melodic metal, this is your whistlestop tour through the best of Katatonia’s 12 albums

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Guitar World

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

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

Metal Hammer

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

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

Metal Hammer

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

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

Metal Hammer

Feel old yet? These classic metal albums turn 20 in 2025

Trivium’s Ascendancy, Bullet For My Valentine’s The Poison and Avenged Sevenfold’s City Of Evil are 20 years old now, and your knees aren’t what they used to be

Metal Hammer

Metal Hammer's 50 best albums of 2024

From Judas Priest's Invincible Shield to Nightwish's Yesterwynde and Opeth's return to extremity, these are the metal albums that ruled 2024

Metal Hammer

“I could be listening to Abba one minute and then Morbid Angel. It doesn’t seem strange to me”: How Porcupine Tree reinvented progressive rock for the 21st century metal generation

Porcupine Tree’s 2010 album The Incident capped their rise from cult psychedelicists to prog metal giants

Louder

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

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

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