Waltteri Väyrynen — born in Finland in 1994 — has been Opeth's drummer since 2022, and is one of the most sought-after instrumentalists of his generation in European metal. Before Opeth he was Paradise Lost's drummer between 2016 and 2022, the period in which the British band returned to its original death-doom on records such as Medusa (2017) and Obsidian (2020) — a repertoire built on slow tempos, in which every stroke is exposed and there is no speed to cover imprecision. Opeth demands the opposite and the same at once. The compositions alternate extreme metal, acoustic passages and progressive rock sections within a single track, with constant changes of metre and dynamics. The drums must move between those registers while keeping continuity — and, from The Last Will and Testament (2024), hold again the weight the guttural vocals reintroduced. He also works in other projects of the Scandinavian scene, the path of a musician who moves between bands of high technical demand rather than settling in one.
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