 
HEAVY AS A REALLY HEAVY THING?
The music of Meshuggah is something that everyone can relate to. The whole cheery subject of "post-apocalyptic cybernetic dehumanization bringing on an internal struggle that is ultimately a contradiction" not only speaks to the human condition, but also seems to be fertile ground for teatime conversation. No one has managed to cover this subject as amusically as Meshuggah. The beauty of this music is the constant discovery of listening to it and sitting down with drummer Tomas Haake we were able to discover the beauty of making the most amelodic cacophony ever heard. We stepped onto the bus to find Tomas picking at some unedible looking stirfry while watching Batman Begins with little interest. The bearded rhythm-king was very welcoming in a reserved and soft spoken way. The exact opposite of what one might expect the drummer of one of the most extreme metal bands on earth to act like. Friendly and easy to talk to he got right down to business. Manifesto: Who's playing bass tonight? Tomas Haake: Dick Loevgren. Last summer was the first tour he did with us. We did mostly festivals and stuff like that. But he joined us earlier that winter , January 2004. M: In the liner notes for "Catch 33," it says that the drums were programmed. TH: The recording is all programmed, which is a taboo in metal. Especially in what we do, where the drums are really prominent. For this album we wanted to do something different. We didn't write this album to play live; we weren't even gonna. It's just an idea we've had for ten years, writing a continuous piece of music over an entire album. Even though there's a bunch of titles, those are like chapters in a book. We wanted it to be extreme on the guitar side. In that sense, it came to be a very guitar-driven album. When we wrote it, we were in more of an office space than a studio. The only thing we did in the studio were the vocals. Everything else was four of us around a computer in an office room. We recorded guitar and bass through a line 6 vetta head straight into the computer. We'd make a drum part for it and program it, then move on to the next thing. So what we had was two hours of music, then we had to piece the whole thing together. For what we wanted, programming the drums sounded really good. A super-steady, emotionless-type drumming. M: The last record, I, was a drawn-out epic as well. Do you guys plan on returning to songs on the next album? TH: The next record is gonna be songs. M: Are you going to do any material from I or Catch 33 at the show tonight? TH: We don't do anything from the I EP. But we play ten minutes or so off of Catch. Not from the beginning of it, but a part in the middle. So we do play it live, which wasn't the intention. We weren't even going to tour for it at all, so once we got offers and decided that we would tour, we thought we needed to do something off the album. M: What was the turning point in the career of this band? TH: The most important thing was the Slayer tour back in '99. It wasn't a huge tour, but still we were able to reach out to American fans. The American market is our strongest market and has been for years. A lot stronger than the European market. When you open for Slayer and you're an unknown band from Sweden, people start to notice you. M: When was the first time you came to play in America? TH: That was in '98. We played the Milwaukee Metal Fest and a few other shows, only about five shows total. It was really weird because we opened for Cannibal Corpse on two of those dates, kind of a weird mix of music. M: Who's your favorite band to play with? TH: Even though we've toured since '94, we haven't toured much. While some bands will do 250 dates a year, we may do 50 on average. So we haven't really toured with a shitload of bands. The tours have been so diverse; we've played with Machine Head and Slayer, the Ozzfest and Tool. We've been on some headlining tours with bands like Strapping Young Lad. The Tool tours were arena tours, and they're fans of our music, so they had their crew work for us basically for free. On those tours we were treated like kings. It's hard to compare those to any of the other ones, because they ran so smoothly. M: How do you manage to survive and maintain your artistic integrity? TH: We have a good situation as far as the label goes. They don't make us do anything that we don't wanna do. We have friends in bands on major labels and they have to have 30 songs and the label wants to have a say in which ones go on the album. We've never done that. Once we have nine songs we're like, "whoa, we have an album again!" We don't have anyone tell us what to do and the label's fine with that. We also have the ability to collect money from them, even if we don't have the master ready. That helps us focus on this and not have to work. We haven't worked outside of the band for the last five years. Stuffed like a Thanksgiving Turkey, the venue was clearly beyond capacity to the degree that I kept my eyes fixated on the EXIT signs in case of a Station (Great White) reenactment. This made the venue not only unsafe but uncomfortable and difficult to enjoy the show. The sound was expectedly poor from the insufficient P.A. Forgettable opening acts the Haunted, the aptly named God Forbid, and Mnemic regurgitated unexceptional puss metal in a feeble attempt to deal with being a metal band in a post-Emo world. And failed spectacularly. When it was time for the headliner, the slack-jawed gawkers all squeezed themselves onto the floor for what would be the transformation of the club. The intense lightshow turned the hokey-assed white trash honky-tonk into a post-apocalyptic opium den of the senses. As a band, there was no comparison. Meshuggah's performance was carried with all of the proficiency, intensity, and precision of their records. Unlike the opening frontmen who cringed in feigned intensity, Jens Lekman transcended that by commanding the audience like a shepherd before his flock. And despite Meshuggah's best efforts, the shortcomings of the club prevailed in making the performance inaudible, uncomfortable, and all together unpleasant. Their swirling soundscapes of polyrhythmia were like playing a mental game of fill in the blanks due to a poor live mix which left the vocals somewhere back in Sweden. |
