Opeth's Mikael Åkerfeldt reviews One Direction

We recently interviewed Opeth mastermind Mikael Åkerfeldt for this month's cover story. The conversation started with Mikael's recent experience taking his daughter to watch One Direction – here's what the Opeth mainman had to say...

“Well, I was in the minority there, being an old dude for one! But it was two sold-out nights at the Friends Arena which holds 60,000 people or something. My oldest daughter likes One Direction, and I anticipated some type of show as they had some elaborate stage thing going on.

“But when the guys hit the stage it kinda felt like they’d just dragged five guys from the crowd up… if there were guys in the crowd, which there obviously wasn’t! It was just people on stage that were able to sing in key, but other than that they didn’t do much, they didn’t do any syncopated dance moves, there wasn’t much of a show. And since there were five guys, they’d sing every fifth line of a song and in between be just walking around.

“For me, it was mind-boggling, I just couldn’t see the fascination, but kids think they’re cute and that kind of stuff. For me, I did not understand the point of the songs… some I recognised but I felt a bit sad in a way. Story Of My Life is the good song, I turned to my daughter and said, ‘This one’s okay.’”

You can read more from Mikael in our new issue, where he talks about the metal rebellion and Opeth’s new found progginess. Pick up your copy here.

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