MIKAEL ÅKERFELDT LEAVES BLOODBATH, ADDS TO GROWING TREND OF MUSICIANS RE-QUITTING THE BAND THEY ONCE RE-JOINED
Following in the recent footsteps of The Haunted’s Peter Dolving, Arch Enemy’s Chris Amott, and Arsis’ Mike Van Dyne, Mikael Åkerfeldt has quit a band he already left and re-joined once already — in this case, Bloodbath. Åkerfeldt originally split from the Swedish death metal supergroup in 2004, then reunited with them in 2007.
Åkerfeldt made the announcement during a recent interview with Loudwire.com:
“I’m not in Bloodbath… They have a new singer, which I can’t say who it is. Bloodbath for me was never a serious project, it was just something I did for fun. We did a few songs on the last North American tour, we did two songs at the very last show because we were touring with Katatonia, so the whole Bloodbath band was there. It’s still fun you know? But I think that some of the other guys in Bloodbath want to take it to the next level, which I don’t really want to do because I’m so busy anyways.”
And while you’d probably assume the decision has to do with the fact that Åkerfeldt isn’t doing death metal screams anymore, he says —
“It doesn’t really have to do with anything with my screaming vocals, it’s just that it’s not a progressive project for me. It’s just paying tribute to death metal and I’ve done it for such a long time. And when it stops being fun, I don’t really want to participate. We do things so rarely it’s always been fun. The shows we’ve done have been fun, but I don’t feel the need to do it.”
Okay so nobody kill me for saying this, but I am actually not the least bit bothered by this news. Yes, I, like everyone, am a huge fan of Åkerfeldt’s, but I’m also a huge fan of Nightmares Made Flesh, the 2004 album Bloodbath made with Hypocrisy’s Peter Tägtgren handling vocals duties. So while we don’t know who this new singer is, it could be someone really cool, and Bloodbath could continue to be awesome without Åkerfeldt. Sooner or later, we’ll learn the answer the hard way.
-AR
[via Metal Underground]
