Michael's lead playing incorporates some modern shredding abilities while retaining the spirit and taste of classic metal players from the 70s. This is true not only in the stoner metal context of Spiritual Beggars, but within Arch Enemy's melodic death metal as well. Michael's tone and melodic lines are quite recognizable and memorable. His most obvious influence is Michael Schenker, and he uses a lot of pentatonic and aeolian licks. He also acknowledges inspiration by Uli Jon Roth, Frank Marino, Ritchie Blackmore and Tony Iommi, but this shows less systematically in his playing. He is one of those players who really have a masterful and discerning use of the wah, often left in half-cocked position in true Schenker fashion, or uses to put a dramatic accent on trills and bends. Michael also has a great vibrato: wide, rather slow, expressive and tasty. His rhythm playing with Arch Enemy involves a lot of thrash metal riffing, along with more Iommi-inspired slower parts. The Spiritual Beggars stuff is more diverse.