Lukas asks… Why are you all so handsome?
Mikael: “Good genes. And good jeans.”
Fredrik: “No stains on the jeans.”
Mikael: “We think about this a lot because he's got a girlfriend, I’ve got a girlfriend, and it’s like, ‘How the fuck can they think that we are not disgusting pigs? What do they see in our ugly fucking asses?’”
Fredrik: “It’s a mystery. I wouldn't say I consider myself handsome, but that's just me.”
Ted asks… Mikael, are you still thinking about doing a solo album?
Mikael: “No. I was almost gonna give a Ritchie Blackmore answer, like, ‘This is my solo album’, but we are very much a band situation, even if I write most of the material. But because I am in this position, I don't have the need, almost. Opeth is the vehicle for everything that that we want to do. There's not really any boundaries. And I don't have a super-odd fetish for reggaeton that means I'm going to do reggaeton solo record. Everything that I want to do I feel I can do in this band. Fredrik is doing one, though…”
Fredrik: “Yeah, I'm working on it. Opeth is, of course, 100 per cent priority number one. But I have two songs already mastered and done, I just need to finish the rest of the seven songs. It’s going to have nine songs on it.”
Mikael: “Why nine?”
Fredrik: “Dante’s Inferno. It's an occult number. I have a third song almost done. Biff Byford from Saxon has said he's going to sing on it. That’ll be a metal song, but the other two ones are instrumental, tons of guitar solos. It's an overdose of guitar.”
Deathtormentor asks… What's your favourite video game?
Mikael: “The Last Of Us Part II. It's a masterpiece. It goes beyond video games. I got emotionally attached to that game and to the characters, which never happened before. That is the best game that was ever put out. If you looking for something besides just shooting people in the head, which is fun, that's my favourite, closely followed by Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption.”
Fredrik: “I’m into Assassin's Creed, the Viking one. That’s fun, because the original games are little limited, but now you have an entire world and you can just wander around it. You have missions, but there’s also a lot of freedom to plunder monasteries and stuff like that village. And it is a pretty cool story. You start off in Norway, then you go to England, and you eventually go into London. So it has a bit of a storyline to it. I also a samurai game called Ghost Of The… something.”
Mikael: “That sounds cool. Can you commit hari-kari?”
Fredrik: “You can. It's pretty gory. It's a lot of blood.”
Mikael: “I was born in the ’70s, so growing up me and my friends played Commodore 64, which I was transfixed by. We played and played and played. But in those days, your parents would come down after an hour and go, ‘That’s enough for today, one hour.’ Now, being 50, it's a bit like, ‘Is it still cool? Can I sit and play games?’ Yeah. Of course I can!”