Opeth (SE)

About

Also known as: オーペス

Few metal bands have pulled off the kind of stylistic range that Stockholm's Opeth has sustained across more than three decades. Built around vocalist, guitarist and primary songwriter Mikael Åkerfeldt, who took the reins after original founder David Isberg left in 1992, the band weaves folk, blues, jazz and classical elements through compositions that regularly stretch well past the ten minute mark. Death growls sit alongside clean vocals, acoustic guitar passages drift into crushing riffs, and Mellotrons show up where you least expect them. Their 2001 album Blackwater Park cracked open mainstream metal attention, and Ghost Reveries in 2005 brought chart success across dozens of countries, including a top ten finish in Sweden. Watershed topped the Finnish albums chart outright. The band has fourteen studio albums to its name, and their most recent, The Last Will and Testament from 2024, won the Swedish Grammis for Best Hard Rock and Metal. Opeth have kept evolving in ways that frustrate genre purists and reward everyone else.