Meshuggah
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The first major release of ’08 (sorry kids, Bullet For My Valentine doesn’t count), Meshuggah’s obZen has been greeted with some major buzz from both fans and industry folk and why shouldn't it? The Umea, Sweden quintet have helped re-write the book on modern extreme metal, creating a wave of woe-be-gone copycats and staccato riffing that is now standard fare in today’s metal scene.
We all know the story behind the seminal Destroy.Erase.Improve and Chaosphere albums and felt a tad polarized about Nothing and the streaky Catch Thirty-Three, so obZen has to deliver in order for Meshuggah to keep its leg up on the competition.
For the most part, obZen delivers, especially in the form of “Combustion” and “Bleed,” two of the most vicious and progressive songs the band has written. The latter might be the heaviest song of the year, the test by which all rhythm guitar players will be measured (you try doing those triplets, pal). “This Spiteful Snake” and “Pravus” are marked improvements on the chaotic template the band has been trying to refine this entire decade while slower, more concerted tracks like “Electric Red” and “Lethargica” may continue to confound and suppress the band’s fanbase. These two songs never get out of first gear and are obviously inferior to the aforementioned tunes.
Nevertheless, there’s always tons to talk about with Meshuggah and rhythm guitarist/hockey enthusiast Marten Hagstrom phoned in on a crisp March afternoon to talk about their upcoming April/May tour with industrial metal lords Ministry, the new album, the mental (and physical) hurdles the band’s music presents, and the vastly underrated None EP. Here we go…
Blistering.com: How did this pairing with Ministry come about?
Marten Hagstrom: Basically, they got in touch with us and asked if we wanted to support them on their last their tour. It seems like a pretty cool tour to be on. It’ll be interesting because we both have that aggressive thing going, where they are very straightforward and we are not, so it’s kind of a little bit of the opposite end of the scale.
Blistering.com: You guys are getting what, 45 minutes for this tour, right?
Marten: Yeah, I think it’s 45 minutes, I’m not 100% sure. We’ll be playing two tracks off the new album. We have an opening set and a headlining set, but it’s kinda difficult. Obviously, we’d like to have a little bit everything. We’ll do something off Destroy, something off Chaosphere, Nothing, but I don’t know how much from each record, but I do know that we’re aiming for two or three songs off the new record.
Blistering.com: Early reports had you going to back to the style of Chaosphere, but it appears obZen is a mixture of the last three albums. Do you agree with that assessment?
Marten: I wouldn’t say that it was a conscious decision to go for anything in particular. If you go back and look at what we’ve done throughout our career, most of our albums have been a reaction to what we were doing previously. Destroy.Erase.Improve is a dynamic, evolved thrash metal album, where Chaosphere not being so dynamic and in your face and aggressive, and Nothing was not like that and was droning. Coming off Catch Thirty-Three which centers around a nightmare at 47 minutes, we were looking for a more aggressive and dynamic approach along with a live vibe and that made it inspiring.
Blistering.com: One of the cool things about the album is how it sounds like it it split up among the songwriters. You can almost get a feel for who wrote what. So, what did you write?
Marten:: I wrote entirely “Pravus,” “Lethargica” and “obZen” and me and Thomas (Haake, drums) co-wrote “Electric Red” and “This Spiteful Snake.”
Blistering.com: “Bleed” is arguably the best thing you’ve done and you put it out on your Myspace before the release of the album. In terms of performing that live, how much of a test of endurance is this song going to be?
Marten: Actually, we’re aiming for it. It’s going to be a bitch (laughs) from a guitar point of view and drum point of view. That song is really special in that way from a technical point and the aspect of memorizing it because the song rhythmically, is one small figure and that small figure is evolving through the whole song. There are these minute changes to doing something very monotonous for a big period of time. There are more difficult things that one: you have the stamina the part, which is being able to go all the way through it because it’s demanding on the pick, especially the thumb muscle which gets prone to cramping if you overdo it. The second one is obviously is keeping track and not getting lost in the hypnotic parts when it gets to be so much of the same in the minute parts.
“Bleed” is probably the song that instantly says something to the listener, but I think most of the songs have a similar quality, but not to that extent. Like “Combustion” is reminiscent of old-school thrash, but in our way in 2008. You have “Lethragica” which is a slow and sludgy song, but very different. But this album is one of those albums where we’re going back to the dynamics of the parts in between the songs and getting them to have an identity all their own.
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