Opeth's Mikael Åkerfeldt says that he doesn't consider himself a singer or guitarist, and opts to label himself with the all-round term "musician" instead.
The distance the frontman feels between himself and the two former terms is caused mostly from his lack of confidence and absence in vocal training, professing to not know "what the hell I'm doing most of the time."
In a new interview with Finland's Chaoszine, the prog metal man explains (as transcribed by Blabbermouth)" "I don't really see myself as a singer — or a guitar player for that matter. I see myself as a — I am a musician. I like to come to write music. I think that's fun. The singer thing, it's, like, nobody else wanted to do it [in the early days of Opeth]. I guess it has to be me."
Adding how he doesn't view himself in league with other successful frontmen, Åkerfeldt continues,"And I don't compare myself to my peers or my idols, especially my idols. I don't go, like, 'Hey, Ronnie Dio, what's your trick? Mine's this and that. I'm gonna teach you something.' Those guys up there. I'm just like a bum who got lucky.
"With our own albums, I wanna listen to the record and not really hear that it's me, so to speak," he says "So I like to distance myself from the person singing on the record. And with death metal vocals, that's quite easy, because, of course, I don't sound like that when I'm talking to you now. And with the clean vocals, I'm just kind of trying to get as close to my idols as I can.
"But everybody's given this particular voice. I don't have any training. I don't know what the hell I'm doing most of the time. The last album that we recorded, I think I tried to sing more clean vocals with a bit more grovelly type of thing.
In spite of his negative perception of his own talents, Åkerfeldt declares that he's content with the fact he can deliver both cleans and screams to a sufficient level."I don't think about vocals", he says. "It's an instrument like any other. Sometimes it demands a full-on type of singing, sometimes a really laid-back type of singing. Lucky for me, I can produce the sounds that I want to hear. So I'm fairly wide as a singer in that sense. I'm not great, but I can sing softly, I can sing midrange a bit stronger and I can do death metal screams."
The Opeth mainman then goes on to reveal how he "distances" himself from his work by trying to hide the "ugly aspects" of his own voice and singing in a way thats different to his natural style.
He continues, "So in that sense, I'm kind of covering a lot of bases from the music that I wanna do. But I'm not a master in either style, if you know what I mean. It's just kind of… I can achieve the results I want. And also it's hard for me to, like I said, see myself as a singer. With that said, nobody else can take my place, if you know what I mean, after all these years. In this band, I am the singer; it's just how it is. And even for me it's hard sometimes to get that through my head.
"For me, I mostly hear the negative aspects of my clean voice, which, what I said before, I don't really like to hear me, meaning the ugly aspects of my own voice, so to speak. So, I try to develop a style that doesn't really sound like me. And over the years, that's the vocal style that's been developed the most while, in a way, the death metal vocals have suffered a little bit for that. But playing live, of course, playing lots of old songs, you do both. Death metal vocals, for me, feel more consistent than the other vocals. But then again, I don't know. It's all perception. What do people think out there in the crowd? 'Oh, he was shit that day,' or 'great that day.' And I thought I was shit both days, if you know what I mean. [Laughs]".
This weekend, Opeth embraced their classic tracks with an old school-style headline set at Bloodstock Festival, performing fan-voted songs such as Ghost Of Perdition and Deliverance.
Opeth's new album The Last Will And Testament is set to arrive on October 11. The band tour the UK with Grand Magus from February 25, 2025.
