Opeth and Katatonia frontmen had Swedish rap band

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Opeth's Mikael Akerfeldt recalls he and Katatonia's Jonas Renkse recorded rap demos because they were "poor" and had a lot of spare time on their hands

Mikael Akerfeldt
Mikael Akerfeldt (Image credit: Getty)

Opeth’s Mikael Akerfeldt has revealed he had a Swedish rap band with Katatonia frontman Jonas Renkse.

He says the pair experimented with different genres in the form of various side projects – because they had a lot of “spare time” and their bands “weren’t going anywhere.”

Akerfeldt tells Revolver (via The PRP): “I haven’t spoken about this a lot in interviews, but I have done demos with a rap band I had with Jonas, the singer from Katatonia. We were poor, we had no money, we had shitloads of spare time because our bands weren’t going anywhere – so we made these demos, and one of them was a rap group we had. So I have done some rap – in Swedish.”

When asked whether they would release the tapes, he replies: “Well, they’re shit. They’re absolute shit! We can’t have been too old, doing something like that.

“All we did was smoke cigarettes, drink coffee and record these stupid fucking side projects. We had a country band, a rap band – we had one band where the music was just farts. And it was named Heinz, after Heinz beans.

“I’m not sure I’d want them to blow up on the internet, but it might be fun to sit down with someone I really respect and say, ‘Listen to this!’”

Akerfeldt recently told Metal Hammer that he is in a “metal gentleman’s club” with members of Entombed AD and Grand Magus.

Opeth are currently on the road in North America in support of their 12th album Sorceress.

Opeth tour dates 2016⁄2017

Oct 12: Oklahoma City Diamond Ballrom, OK
Oct 13: Houston Warehouse Live, TX
Oct 14: Austin Emos, TX
Oct 15 Dallas Gas Monkey Live, TX
Oct 18: Las Vegas Brooklyn Bowl, NV
Oct 19: Tempe Marquee Theater, AZ
Oct 21: Sacramento Ace Of Spades, CA
Oct 22: San Francisco Warfirled, CA
Oct 24: Portland Roseland Theater, CA
Oct 25: Seattle Moore Theater, WA
Oct 26: Vancouver Orpheum, Canada
Nov 05: Stockholm Annexet, Sweden
Nov 06: Oslo Konserthus, Norway
Nov 07: Copenhagen DR Koncerthuset, Denmark
Nov 08: Hamburg Docks, Germany
Nov 10: Vienna Arena, Austria
Nov 11: Stuttgart LKA Longhorn, Germany
Nov 12: Munich Theaterfabrik, Germany
Nov 13: Zurich Volkshaus, Switzerland
Nov 14: Milan Alcatraz, Italy
Nov 16: Cologne E-Werk, Germany
Nov 18: Tilburg 013, Netherlands
Nov 19: London SSE Wembley Arena, UK
Nov 21: Paris Le Trianon, France
Nov 23: Luxembourg Den Atelier, Luxembourg
Nov 24: Berlin Astra Kulturhaus, Germany
Feb 06: Sydney Opera House, Australia

Love, loss and learning to move on: the story behind Opeth's Sorceress

Christina O'Neill

Former TeamRock news desk member Christina joined our team in late 2015, and although her time working on online rock news was fairly brief, she made a huge impact by contributing close to 1500 stories. Christina also interviewed artists including Deftones frontman Chino Moreno and worked at the Download festival. In late 2016, Christina left rock journalism to pursue a career in current affairs. In 2021, she was named Local Weekly Feature Writer of the Year at the Scottish Press Awards.