Fredrik Åkesson

Fredrik Åkesson — born in Sweden in 1972 — has been Opeth's guitarist since 2007, having come in for Peter Lindgren. His arrival coincides with the period in which the band would progressively move away from death metal. He recorded Watershed (2008), the last album with guttural vocals before the long interval, and then Heritage (2011), Pale Communion (2014), Sorceress (2016), In Cauda Venenum (2019) and The Last Will and Testament (2024) — the phase in which Opeth operated as a progressive rock band before taking the growls up again. That transition asked of him something different from what is expected of an extreme metal guitarist. The compositions after Heritage favour clean tone, open harmonies, solos built as melody and references to 1970s rock. Åkesson brings from his earlier training — he passed through Arch Enemy, among other bands — a technical command that lets him move between the two languages without seeming out of place in either. He shares the guitars with Mikael Åkerfeldt in a contrapuntal configuration, with no fixed division between rhythm and lead.