Chords for How Opeth's Mikael Akerfeldt Learned to Scream

Hey guys, Michael from Oakworth here.
You're watching Loudwire.
_ _ [G] When did you decide [G#] that you wanted to start singing in a metal style and start singing gutturals?
What influenced you to do that?
[D] _
[G] Well, Napalm Death.
You know, I was born in 74, so that makes me 45 years old.
And I grew up with the New Wave, British Heavy Metal, that kind of stuff.
And it was like an evolution of sorts.
You [D#] wanted heavier, faster, [D] more extreme.
And of course you had the speed and thrash metal scene.
And along comes the early black metal scene and then the death metal scene.
And [C#] at that point, when I got into death metal, I was 14, 15 years old.
And I was just learning a few licks on the guitar.
And I figured I could do that.
I could do You Suffer by Napalm Death.
Two [Em] second song, you know.
[D] You didn't necessarily have [D#] to be on the right fret.
Just make noise.
That's how it started.
And I always wanted to be a really good lead guitar player.
Like Yngwie [D] Malmsteen.
That was my_ Really?
Yeah, that's what I wanted.
But I never practiced.
[E] I never got there.
And nobody else in the band at the time, when I started with my [D] first band, Eruption,
nobody wanted to be the singer.
And I was like, well, I guess I'll be the singer.
[D#] And then, because I couldn't really sing Celine Dion, I tried to do The [E] Screams instead.
We did Misfits covers with that set.
We played all the Misfits songs.
Did you do a good Danzig?
No.
I was too juvenile of a voice.
Okay, a bit too young at that.
Yeah, I didn't have [C#] the_
whatever it's doing.
I didn't have that.
But we did that type of stuff.
And then I found my own voice.
I didn't know if I did it the right [D] way.
I didn't know if I had a technique until we recorded the first album.
Because that's the only time I got feedback from somebody who knew
what it's supposed to sound [N] like in the studio.
And that was Don Svane who did our first two albums.
And he said, well, that's the most insane death metal vocals I've heard.
I was like, oh, you don't say.
I didn't know.
You're a big fan of David Vincent's voice.
Was he a big influence on how you developed your guttural?
Yeah, the only influence.
Him and Chuck Schuldiner.
I also like the kind of piggy sounds of Chris Ryford.
Oh, yeah.
Like Autopsy.
I like that stuff.
Quarterm battery was big for me.
But Vincent was the best because you could hear what he was saying, basically.
I met him the other day.
Was he wearing a cowboy hat?
He was wearing [D] a cowboy hat.
But I love Dave.
I met him a couple of times.
I can't remember if I ever said to him that [C#] he's number one.
He is the best.
I think that's a fact.
It's not a matter of taste.
You can't dispute that.
He's the king.
King of death.
That's pretty awesome.
He is.
Do you remember back when you started to develop it,
were you the kind of person to hide yourself in a room and try to get like_
No.
No?
No, I just based my technique on not hearing what I'm doing, I think.
We didn't use earplugs in those days. No, no.
We had an old 70s PA that we got from a legendary Swedish punk band called Ebba Grön.
We had it in our rehearsal space.
We didn't really have a rehearsal space.
We just borrowed a place and carried everything to be able to rehearse.
So the technique is [F] based on trying to [D#] cut through the noise.
Yeah.
And a lot of it based on not [Em] hearing what the_
I'm sorry if I'm_
No, you can say what you want.
Not hearing what you're doing.
So I didn't know what my technique was, but I learned after a while that
there was a [C#] sense of economy to how I_
I don't kind of ruin my voice in that sense.
So I had that technique.
It's not so high in volume.
Sure.
It's pretty low in volume, but it sounds like a beast, if I get it right.
But it wasn't until we started recording that I could see that it actually sounds good with a good sound, too.
Wow, that's awesome.
You didn't even really know what it sounded like while you were doing it.
No.
So you were pleasantly surprised when you heard it back?
Yeah, I liked it.
And I still do that with the clean vocals, too.
I want to sound like someone else, basically.
I don't want to hear me in the mix.
I want to listen to a band that I'm not involved in, [D] so I can listen as a fan, if you know what I mean.
Yeah, yeah.
So with the screaming vocals, that was much easier, of course, because I don't sound like that.
With the clean [C#] vocals, I try to reach those types of levels of the people that I admire.
And those are all great singers, and I'm not a great singer.
I'm just trying to sound like someone else.
[C] Were you trying to sound like anyone in particular on this new record?
Well, I ended up finding a voice that I think sounds good, because I'm singing really over my abilities.
I'm singing higher than I can, and you get that frustrated sound, which I like in my voice, if you know what I mean.
But my idols are the good stuff, like Ronnie [D] Dio, Paul Rogers, those types that have the blues background.
But then I also like to sing as a songwriter, like Nick Drake, Jonah Mitchell, and David Cabrera.
Yeah, _ [F#] those types are good.
I'm not very big on power metal like that.
Sure.
That sounds a bit silly to me.
I want that type of, I guess, man's voice.
That type of stuff I like.
And especially if they have that bluesy roots, I really like that.
Awesome.
Michael, thank you so much for talking to me today.
Cheers.
Encauda Venenum [C] is the new record.
September 27th.
Pick it up.
Cheers.
_ [A#] _ _ _ _ _ _ [C] _