OPETH Members Involved In Road Collision

Guitarist/vocalist Mikael Åkerfeldt of Swedish progressive metallers OPETH has issued the following update:

"Myself, Axe [OPETH drummer Martin Axenrot], Fredrik [Åkesson; OPETH guitarist] and our soundman, Pontus Norgren, decided to fly home to our families for a few days as the option would have been three days off in Brussels.

"Now I hear that our bus apparently crashed into this other car making a unexpected U-turn in the middle of the highway. [OPETH bassist Martin] Mendez and [OPETH keyboardist] Per [Wiberg] were on the bus together with the rest of our crew but nobody got hurt. They are, however, shocked and very shaken, of course. The driver in the other car was critically injured. I've not heard back from anyone yet regarding his progress but apparently it's not looking very good. Hoping for the best, however.

"I don't know where or when this happened but I know the bus was heading from Dublin to Brussels.

"I'll let you know more as soon as I get some information, but as for now everyone in the band are safe and same with our crew. As far as I know, the only injured person was the driver of the other car, which obviously is horrible enough!

"To be honest, I rarely think about things, accidents like this, but fuck, man, it happens! My mind's all over the place and right now I don't want to go back out. But... the show in Brussels on the 17th and the remaining part of the [Progressive Nation] tour [with DREAM THEATER, BIGELF and UNEXPECT] will go ahead as planned."

Åkerfeldt recently revealed to Holland's FaceCulture that he is contemplating recording a singer-songwriter acoustic solo album.

"My views [regarding songwriting] have broadened a little bit," Mikael said. "I guess when I discovered Nick Drake, that's when I really got into that whole simplistic type of music that really needs something strong — strong material in order to make it come across with so little."

He continued, "I've always been wanting to do a thing like that. I've got a bunch of lovely acoustic guitars back I wanna use more. Even though OPETH could probably do an album like that, I wanna do it on my own, and in that sense, I wanna record it on my own — in my house, basically. I think I can do it well. I think I can do a good album like that.

"I'd like to maybe simplify it even more [than the OPETH acoustic stuff], and have it just chords playing, and maybe some finger-picking stuff, so I could be able to perform it if I would wanna do that. So I don't want it to be lots of tracks, like overdubbing guitars with lots of melodies; I want it to be fairly simplistic so if I wanted to, I could play it live on my own... on a stool. [laughs]"