Opeth - Morningrise (1996)

Morningrise was the second nihilist effort of the band Opeth, while still not showing their progressive side of their musical influences. After the brave and unique approach of their death-metal style with acoustic instrumentation with their first album, they explored Akerfeldt style acoustic to its fullest, with the song "To Bid You Farewell". Written after Mikael's girlfriend cheated on him, it is one of the most accessible and popular songs of the band. Describing the song; Mikael once said that he thought the song would shock the listener, because of the unusually calm acoustic guitar section placed between the brutal plain death metal parts. When they asked him the reason behind them stopping making songs like To Bid You Farewell, he answered: "Because everybody was doing songs like that, at the time."

Commenting on the album, Mikael said: "Many fans say it's our best. It's unique I think for a metal band, but my least favorite Opeth album due to the sound. It's absolutely bollocks! The snare is the worst I've heard + the guitars are really mosquito-like! Good album but not my fave!"

He also mentioned a memory of Johan De Farfalla: "Our bassist at the time was bragging about how good he was in chess. We played that a lot during the recording. He said he'd been studying chess strategies. Everyone of us beat him!”

Morningrise has certainly demonstrated the different and unique way the band was heading towards, since the following albums included more songs with the mixed acoustic style of Opeth and cleaner vocals of Mikael with death metal (as they headed to the kingdom of prog). It also contained the song that helped people to get into Opeth, which is also Mikael's favorite (To Bid You Farewell).