Meshuggah interview

We were basically just asked by Ministry's people. It was right in the timeframe for us – it was perfect timing. The album just [came] out, and the whole tour made a lot of sense. We've known Ministry since 15 or 20 years back, so it's a cool thing to be out doing this. This being their last tour, supposedly, there's been a good turnout. We're really happy about it.

Oh yeah, of course.

Yeah, that's fine. I mean, I'm lazy – I'd rather play 45 minutes than an hour and 15, but I'd rather not be the support band. A lot of things are a lot easier when you're headlining. We don't really see ourselves doing more support tours after this unless it's something really super major.

It's been good so far. It's definitely a shame for our fans. If you're not into Ministry at all, it's steep to pay. It's pretty hefty to pay $45, $50, $55 just to see us play 45 minutes if that's what you're there for. But at the same time, people know what's going on – they know the setup and all that. We've still had a good turnout of people there for us, too, but it's an expensive Meshuggah gig.

The shoulder is pretty good, man. It's actually very good – I haven't had a single pinch of pain so far. It was kind of bad a few months back, but I started working it out. I started strengthening the rotator cuff, which means you use rubber bands and you go, like, sideways – all sorts of weird kinds of exercises. Some people, they say, respond very well to these exercises. I guess I'm one of those guys. I'm really lucky. I'm stoked that I'm not feeling bad at all.

I don't know. I mean, I may not have to, but I can never stop doing the workout routine. It's something that I need to do. It's only ten minutes a day, so who gives a shit? That's a small price to pay. But I might – it all depends. What I'm aiming at right now – what we're aiming at – is to be able to tour this album out, because doing anything like that will cut me away for four, five, six months.

Oh, definitely – the first track is definitely a straightforward thrash metal-y late 80s/early 90s-type track. It has that vibe – I totally agree with you. That aspect of the album, though, is not intentional – that's just an afterthought. We all discovered that it's almost like a sample platter of all the different albums that we've done.

Yeah, it's pretty technical.

It's a difficult to learn, and difficult to play live. We're slowly getting to where we feel really comfortable with it. There's this one part in that track where the pattern is permuting, and if you lose it in that pattern, it's really, really hard to get back into it. It's the very oddness of that repetition.

No, no. I don't think people really notice it too much, but we've really only nailed it on a couple of nights. It's only tiny mistakes, though – people usually don't notice.

Yeah, but that's for the States only. You don't really need that in Europe.

Well, early on we did, but it's been 15 years or so. We did for this one because I came up with the title and what I wanted for the artwork: the lotus position, the three arms, the hands that form an arc of sixes … I don't know if you noticed, but that's why they're differently turned – they actually make an arc of sixes. It's kind of suggesting the inherent evil in man. And, for this – for the vision I had – I knew that we had to turn to photography. It's not something that I could do in Photoshop, so we turned to Joachim Luetke of Switzerland. He's done quite a few things: Dimmu Borgir, Pain, Arch Enemy, a lot of work with other bands. I just kind of explained my whole vision and why I wanted it, and he basically took it from there.

No, not really. I think it's really difficult once you outsource it. I've always sort of fiddled with stuff forever until we all feel that we like it, and I'm not completely satisfied. It doesn't really look like my vision. It still looks cool, but my vision was darker – in color scheme and everything. I was actually talking to him about it and he wanted to do a brighter sky and have it brighter because it clashes more with the blood. And it actually does – it makes sense. It really stands out for a metal cover, too, because it's not your typical metal cover. All those old bands go way black. A lot of bands do everything really dark. I feel that his vision – what came to be – is still maybe cooler in some ways just because it stands out on a shelf. You see it. For a metal cover, it's definitely different.

I knew you were gonna say that. [Laughs] It's not really a sequel, but it's kind of in the same vain topic-wise.

Yeah, there are pretty close – definitely. That's intentional.

Yes.

No, not really. I don't see any importance in it. It's just … well, should I say no importance? I don't know – to some extent. It's a lyric that I really like 'cause it's different from the other ones on the album – it's not political, it's not really pointed at the human species as such, whereas most of the other lyrics on the album are more toward that direction. It stands out for me in that sense. A bit language-wise, too, but mostly because it's got different a content to it.

Yeah, yeah – I guess it is kind of Zen-related … but drug-induced. [Laughs]

We do this, come back and we're home for, like, 3 weeks. Then, we do European festivals and off-dates with Dillinger Escape Plan in between those festivals.

No – it's not a tour, really. They're in Europe doing festivals, and the festivals are always [on] the weekend – like Thursdays through Sundays – so Monday through Wednesday, we do off-shows with them. And we do that until, like, one week into July, I think. Then, we have a few weeks off. We do some more festivals throughout August, then we do a European headline run in September. We're home for a few weeks, then we go to Japan and Australia. Home for a few weeks, then we come over here again for a headline run in November – most likely mid-November until mid-December.

My recent obsession, I tried to get it today because we've been listening to it on the bus, is the new Cornelius album – [the] Japanese artist. I couldn't find it, though. What I bought here today was an Allman Brothers CD. We don't really listen to much metal – it's more, like, electronic music and rock. Me and Dick [Lövgren, Bass] have been listening to 60s and 70s southern rock – Allman Brothers included. You know, Lynyrd [Skynyrd] – stuff like that. It's pretty cool.

Yeah, you want something softer to wind down.

On what song?

Oh, yeah – okay, from their album. Right. Actually, Danny told me that they were definitely [influenced] to some extent – there were some influences from us on their album. Not that I could really make those influences out, but he said it's there, so that's cool. I mean, we try ourselves not to really be influenced by other bands as such, but of course it's completely impossible to shut everything out, and if there's one band that is very influential, and has been on us, it would be Tool. Just being out with them. I wouldn't say it's really audible or visible on this album, but if we had not done the tours we did with them, this album would probably not sound this way – because you're influenced by everything, you know?

Yeah, the part with the toms? Yeah, that would be the one part that – as an afterthought, not deliberately – is definitely kind of Tool-ish.

I love it. I haven't listened to it as much as Lateralus, though – I was really heavily into that one. The last two years, I really haven't listened to a lot of music – I've just been writing, recording – and so I haven't properly … I've listened through it a bunch of times, but I really haven't gotten to grips with it. It's a really difficult album. It's amazing, and it's great to see that a band like that with such complex music can reach such levels. They actually reached [those] levels with simpler music, but now they just keep getting more and more difficult with each album, and [are] still staying up there as far as sales [go]. It's really cool. It's a true indication that there's at least something healthy going on in the music scene.

Not completely, but in all honesty, it wasn't really … I mean, we re-recorded the guitars, we exchanged the snare drum for a sampled one. Some stuff like that. But we did that – or Fredrik did it – for our own sake. He spent a few weeks re-recording stuff just to see what it could have sounded like. We never liked how it sounded, the production of it, just because we had the Ozzfest coming up and that whole album recording was just really stressed, and [we] did it in just a few weeks. The production suffered from it, I think. We didn't really have time to do a lot of things, to go back and redo stuff. We just wanted to do it for ourselves, and Nuclear Blast heard of it, and they strongly suggested we re-release it because they also liked the new production once their heard it. It was on their behalf, it was on their side – we weren't really gonna do that.

It's just a few tracks live and a couple of videos. It's nothing much, but – yeah, it's kinda cool.

Yeah, yeah. We have, and hopefully it will happen this fall – either on the European tour, or when we come back to the States.

A Life Once Lost I've heard about. The Acacia Strain I have not.

Yeah?

Okay, yeah.

Yeah, there were a lot of people that kinda disliked it.

Yeah, it has – definitely. It's been one of those albums where it didn't sell very well initially, but it's been keeping on. Sales have been very steady compared to other releases we have – where you have a peak at first and then it kind of dies down and it stays on a lower level. By now, it's actually sold quite a lot. I definitely think that it took some time for people to understand what we were getting at.

Oh, yeah – totally. It's kind of trance-y in its own way. It's got that vibe to it just because of some of those really long ongoing riffs and movements, and kind of the slow progression of the track, you know? It's a headphones type of track.

I never have any thoughts – final, or initial.