Words by Michael O'Brien

Over the past twenty years or so Meshuggah have gone from relative obscurity to become a hugely influential force in the world of extreme music with their instantly recognisable sound and approach to song writing. They have been one of my personal favourites for nearly fifteen years now, so having the opportunity to speak with guitarist Marten Hagstrom during a brief respite from touring about the band, their latest album obZen and their impending first ever tour or Australia was a huge thrill.

Whilst I am a self confessed Meshuggah fanboy I still have to be honest and admit that I’ve found their albums since 1998’s Chaosphere to be pretty hit and miss with the band experimenting heavily on their classic and highly recognisable sound in ways that haven’t always been all that interesting for me. As I mentioned in my recent review of it, obZen was the first album of theirs in some time that I really got excited about. With that being said, I was very interested to hear what Marten’s feelings were about the album as well.

“We’re really happy with it so far. It seems to be doing really well and the response has been really overwhelming. You know it’s a declining industry and we’re doing something kind of on the fringe so it’s really nice to see that it’s doing good. I mean there’s always a fact that when we release an album it’s always kind of a divider it seems you know? There’s a bunch of people that really don’t like it and bunch that get it and gets into it. Then it’s just a matter of how many are on either side and it seems to be a lot of people are liking this album so we’re feeling good about it. And as far as we feel about the actual material you know it’s just about to sink in; we’re just about to gain some perspective on what it’s really about because it always does to tend to take a while. There’s always things that you’d like to change but we’re feeling pretty confident that we hit as close as we could to the mark.”

The themes that sit beneath obZen are both interesting and thought provoking. I asked Marten to elaborate a little on the concept of the album and what the inspiration was for the musical direction they have taken.

“As far as the music goes we just had no real idea of direction; we never really do. I mean whenever an idea is born like when we got the idea for Catch33 that was something that set that project off and this is one of those things where it just felt natural after having that type of release in our back to kind of go into regular song structures again. That was basically the only thing we intuitively felt straight away that that was going to happen. As far as you know the obZen, the meaning behind the actual album title and the cover, it’s sort of a word play between obscene and Zen obviously. It’s kind of trying to say that it seems like humanity has been finding its inner peace or its balancing level through being or nurturing the bad stuff in our nature like greed and the exploitation of others and not for the common good. And you that’s something that seems to be the duality of humanity and that’s why the guy on the cover is like a guy finding his inner peace at that moment but still his hand is dripped in blood. It’s a bit of a metaphor.”

Whether you, for want of a better word, “get” Meshuggah and their music - that they can come up with seemingly endless patterns of odd timed riffs and song structures never ceases to amaze me. Further still is how all of these ideas are then crafted first into songs and then into an album of songs. Do they work hard on making everything consistent and how does it all come together in the end?

“Yeah I would say so, I mean sometimes when you come up with stuff you can hear three riffs in a row and you’re coming up with one thing and you’re trying to put it down and in the process of doing it you’re coming up with what should come next and then you build it and then all of a sudden you have half a song or maybe even a song but most of the time it’s just like one riff here or there but the whole process of writing it is kind of making the blueprint because I sit down and program the drums, record the guitar and record the bass in the computer so when I present an idea to the other guys it’s presented in band form pretty much the way I want it to be. So at one point or another we might change out the arrangements over a fill or maybe a choice of cymbal or maybe moving something a little bit but we stick true to the general idea pretty much; it’s not a lot different. On some songs we actually restructure a lot but it’s rare.”

With music as polyrhythmic as theirs is, it isn’t too surprising to hear that electronic aids such as a drum machine are utilised to help flesh out the ideas for their songs and it seems that the drum machine is an extremely important part of the creative process for Marten.

“It’s just such a superior tool when you know how to use it to have pretty much the drum quality that we had on Catch33, not as nicely programmed or that mix, but close to it. When I have an idea I hear the drums and everything like a part so when you put it down it’s like figuring out how to program the drums so they sound the way you want and then you record the guitar so it’s pretty much a demo which makes it real easy because you can get so close to what you want to get across even though it’s not 100 percent it’s close enough to make an intelligent decision as to whether it’s good or not.”

With Marten programming so much of the formative drum material I was left wondering just how much input drummer Tomas Haake has in the creative process. Does he just take what he’s given or does he add his own flair?

“When you program drums sometimes it’s more natural for him to maybe do stuff that I haven’t programmed 100 percent but a lot of time it’s pretty much accurate 100 percent, he just takes it from whatever it is on the computer and plays it that way but sometimes of course he has to work around certain stuff. I think it says a lot about his work ethic because he comes and has some real tricky shit to pull off and he just bites it and takes it and really works it. He’s really good at that.”

As Marten had mentioned earlier, every time Meshuggah release an album they seem to polarise their fans with whichever direction they take. For me obZen struck a great balance between their earlier thrash roots and their more modern, drone like sound. Will this mix of sounds be a recurring theme in the future?

“It’s hard to say. Whenever you release an album that question comes up, like is this the route you’re taking now, but to be honest it’s something that we’ve learnt through the years that we never really know what’s going to happen next. We’re pretty rigid in our Meshuggah form. We have a distinctive way of doing stuff that is the way we do stuff. For us it’s never until the first couple of riffs or half songs or whatever come together that the general vibe is starting to set so I couldn’t really tell you. I just know that we have some left over stuff that I’d really like to continue working on because it feels like it could be really cool stuff.”

Meshuggah have never been afraid of experimentation whether it is musical or technological. Is there anything that Marten would like to experiment with musically that he has not had the chance to yet?

“I guess pretty much everyone has some part of them that would like to try out something different. I know that Fredrik did his solo album where it’s not a far leap from what Meshuggah does but it’s still something different. It might not be that any one of us wants to sit down and sing camp fire songs all of a sudden but you know there’s always that different thing that you maybe feel might not be 100 percent correct for Meshuggah as a band but still is good stuff for what it is on its own right. We mess around with some different stuff but it’s nothing that we really focus on, it’s more or less a by product for most of us and as far as within the band, whenever something comes along it just comes along. Whenever an idea is born it’s just what happens and we’ve learned not to try to push it because then you do a lot of stuff that may not work out, it has to be intuitive on a level.”

So is Meshuggah’s recognisable formula a barrier to experimentation and does it bring with it a certain lack of freedom as well?

“I wouldn’t say that it’s a lack of freedom to choose the stuff that I might like to. For me personally I’ve done a bunch of stuff that tends to draw towards a little bit of a different vibe. It still sounds Meshuggah because it’s kind of hard to get away from because it’s written on the 8-string and it’s me writing it so some flavour of Meshuggah is still going to be there, one way or another it’s kind of hard to get around. It’s stuff that I’ve recorded for my own personal sake. It’s just for me. So stuff like that is something that you never know what you might do with down the road but it definitely has a different type of vibe, it’s a lot more streamlined and a lot more stoner (laughs). But stuff like that has to take the back seat to what we’re doing in Meshuggah and the thing is that even though some of the parts you write for Meshuggah might end up in the folder where all that stuff goes or the other way around, you never really know what comes up.”

So many bands owe their current sound to the direct influence of Meshuggah. One would assume that being part of a band that has been responsible for shaping the sound of so many others would be hugely satisfying and while Marten is flattered by it he is also extremely humble as well.

“I really don’t know, basically it’s a good thing. It’s hard to sit down and think that apparently we’re inspiring all these bands, it’s fucking great. It’s not something you think about. It’s kind of nice to see that people, especially musicians you know, being a musician you know that a lot of musicians when you start out you try to browse the type of music that’s out there and if you’ve done something that makes people think that wow this is a cool thing, this is how I’m going to approach my music, then that’s flattering in a way but that being said, I don’t really know how to gauge a thing like that.”

As with any band that enjoys their fair share of success, touring is an important and extremely necessary part of their job. From all accounts Meshuggah’s latest ventures on the road have gone very well.

“It’s been going good. We’ve done one US tour for eight weeks and one European one for three weeks and then we’ve done some festivals off and on. We’re still in festival mode now so to speak and then we’re going to do a European headline tour in September as well before coming down to you guys. The response has been awesome so far so hopefully it will continue.”

And what of the new material in the live arena?

“It’s starting to sink in. We’ve been having to rely on the crew and our sound guys to ask them how they think it’s going over and they’re really positive about it and the way it’s starting to feel is that we’re getting comfortable with the three songs we’ve been choosing to play live so it’s feeling good right now.”

For a band that tours as much as Meshuggah do, something I always wonder is what kind of toll such a rigorous schedule takes on the band. From Marten’s response it’s clear that he sees it as a necessary evil, if you will, if you are to maintain exposure for the band.

“We shouldn’t complain I mean there’s bands like In Flames who tours like 260 shows a year or something like that so I mean that’s brutal and I guess that’s what you need to do if you really want to build a big fan base but it’s just brutal. We’re a band that looks at maybe 140 shows on an album and while that’s a long time to be away considering that you fly out to do press and you fly out to a bunch of other shit as well it’s still manageable because while the backside of being in a band is being away from your family a lot and trying to cope with that fact it’s also a fact that when you’re home you can spend a lot of time at home so it’s a double-edged sword.”

After so many years of playing and touring I got the impression that there is still a lot of enjoyment to be had from touring for Marten but, like anything else, the fun factor may not always be there.

“It depends on the tour. It really seems to depend less on how many tours you’ve done previously than the actual fact that you might do a tour where everything feels kind of crap. It may not be a bad tour as far as promotion goes but you just feel that it’s not a good tour and sometimes it’s just like being on vacation so it depends a lot.”

After years of rumour and speculation, when the official announcement was made that Meshuggah would finally make their way to our shores I, like many others, was extremely excited at the prospect of seeing them live. The obvious thing to ask Marten was why it has taken so long for the band to make it down to Australia.

“Well primarily one reason; bad timing. Obviously early on we didn’t have the option to go to down under because we were too small but the last five years there’ve been some attempts to do it and make it happen but it’s always come at a period in time where we might have had time off but there wasn’t any chance to go down and do it then and then when we actually had to do something else like go back into the studio then the offer would come. So it’s been a lot of bad timing actually.”

And for those of us that have been waiting a long, long time with baited breath; what can we hope to see from Meshuggah when they take the stage in Australia for the first time?

“Man, I don’t know. A bunch of weird, fucked up Swedes messing around on stage (laughs). We’re excited to go down because it’s the first time and you don’t know what to expect. You never know what shows there are going to be when you come to a new territory so we’re just looking forward to it and hopefully we’ll bring something that people find exciting.”

Meshuggah's latest album, obZen, is out now on Nuclear Blast Records through Riot! Entertainment. Meshuggah's first ever Australian/New Zealand tour takes in the following dates and cities: Fri Oct 10, Tranmission, Auckland, NZ; Sun Oct 12, The Arena, Brisbane, AUS; Mon Oct 13, Roundhouse, Sydney, AUS; Tue Oct 14, HQ, Adelaide, AUS; Wed Oct 15, Palace Theatre (formerly Metro), Melbourne, AUS; Thur Oct 16, Capitol, Perth, AUS. For more information on Meshuggah, check out www.meshuggah.net.