Fredrik Åkesson, born and bred in Stockholm, first picked up the guitar at the age of 12. He discovered Michael Schenker at the age of 14 and has been hooked on the "shred" ever since. Other early influences include Uli Jon Roth, Yngwie Malmsteen and George Lynch.

Over the years Fredrik has lent his awesome guitar talent to several varied artists.

When Jason Bieler left Talisman to play with Saigon Kick, Matti Alfonzetti, Marcel Jacob and Jake Samuels did some auditions in 1992 to find a new guitar player. They finally decided on young Fredrik (19 years old at the time).

Since then, Fredrik has been handling guitars on all the band’s albums until the fall of 1995 when, after the release of “Life” he left and formed the far heavier outfit Eyeball featuring the vocalist Mats Levén of Malmsteen fame, Europe bass-player John Levén and former It’s Alive drummer Rickard Evensand. The band changed its name to Southpaw and Z Records released the S/T album in 1998.

In Talisman Fredrik is substituted by the Great King Rat and Jekyll & Hyde axeman Pontus Norgren who records on the album “Truth” released in 1998 and plays with the band at Sweden Rock Festival in 2001.

Fredrik has also played with John Norum, Shock Tilt, Clockwise, One Cent and Taurus.

In 2002 he began to work with the super heavy metal band Krux, fronted by Candlemass leader Leif Edling and featuring four other names from the pantheon of Swedish heavy metal: Mats Levén, Jörgen Sandström on guitar, Peter Stjärnvind from Entombed on drums and Carl Westholm from Carp Tree on keyboards.

In the same year Fredrik returned to be the Talisman guitar player.

In 2004 he recorded with the band Sabbtail again with singer Mats Levén as well as the former Necronomicon guys Håkan Rangemo on drums, Jan Lund on bass and Jan Bingegård on keyboards.

Early 2005 found Fredrik joining the touring line-up Tiamat, replacing regular guitarist Thomas Petersson who had been detained by "parental duties".

In September of 2005 Fredrik enrolled himself into the ranks of Arch Enemy as a replacement for guitarist Chris Amott for continuing the "Doomsday Machine" world touring campaign.