Opeth treat every album like it's their last

Opeth mainman Mikael Akerfeldt says he treats every album as if it’ll be the band’s last.

Not looking beyond the project he’s currently working on helps him get the best out of his ideas, the frontman says.

He tells Maniacs Japan: “I see each record as a possible last record. But I think it’s a healthy thing, to not look into the future too much, for me. I’ve never been one of those guys – I just live in the now.

“So I can’t really see where we’re gonna take it musically. I think that we’re gonna put out more records. So I’m excited about that. But when I think about the future, the thing that excites me the most is the fact that I don’t know what’s gonna happen – to keep it fresh and exciting for us too. So we don’t have a plan for the future, but we hope that there is a future.”

The band recently performed 2005 album Ghost Reveries in full at a show in London.

Opeth are the cover stars in the current issue of Prog magazine, available now in print, digital and via TeamRock+.

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Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.