MESHUGGAH

Double victory

The inventors of syncope metal and unquestioned masters of their domain have been thinking out the successor of “Catch 33” for 4 years. Of course in the meantime there was a new edition of “Nothing” - often meanly described as “an album with one string more” - but being objective, we didn’t experience anything new. I guess that after such a long break the thirst for MESHUGGAH is infectious even for those who usually can’t stand their music in greater amount. The biggest pleasure for me to announce that … here it is! The newest strike of MESHUGGAH being the least freaky thing in their career. Of course talking about this band you have to treat these words indulgently as Swedes have never been sane and “ObZen” will cause you much trouble. And you’ll get one in the chops – as proudly informs me Tomas Haake.

- Hi Tomas! Do you have any fresh news from MESHUGGAH?
Hi! Actually not, thing’s the same as usual. Our newest album „ObZen” has been ready for a few months, that’s why currently we focus mainly on practicing the material for the upcoming tour in USA. In the meantime we deal with promotion and this interview is a good example. Generally it’s pretty good, we’re in good moods, most pressmen like this album…

- Right, my best wishes on already the sixth studio release of MESHUGGAH. I guess that you’re pretty satisfied with “ObZen’s” content?
Oh yeah, man. We’re all very satisfied but also...tired of this album (laugh). It took us a lot of time to create it so I’m glad that it’s going to appear in stores soon. It’s a really good album. Our aim was to create something versatile consisting of compositions having varied structures and character. As always we paid a lot of time and attention to the production matters. Oh yeah, the final result makes us all really proud.

- What actually hides behind the title „ObZen” and how does it go with lyrical content of this album?
The title itself is a free play of words, a mixture of “obscene” and “Zen” deriving from Buddhist tradition. First and foremost it’s not a typically conceptual album but you can easily notice a certain direction in which all themes tackled on “ObZen” go. Lyrics, title and cover form a self-contained whole. I don’t want to develop the subject of particular texts since they are quite broad and it’d take us much time. However, simplifying as much as possible, “ObZen” is about the evil being inside all of us, about war, bloodshed and all that after all helps us live in some physically-spiritual balance. This album, let’s say, is getting into the complicated human’s nature.

- You decorated it with interesting and drawing attention cover. By the way, it associates with “Mechanical Animal” a bit and generally Marylin Manson…
Oh yeah, indeed! The guy from the cover resembles Manson. It’s funny that I’ve never though about it (laugh). For recent 10 years mainly I was responsible for MESHUGGAH’s covers. I also had an idea on front cover of “ObZen” but I couldn’t carry it out myself sitting over Photoshop. Nevertheless, I knew a photographer and came to a conclusion that together we can obtain a desirable effect. Finally, we focused mainly on photography this time whereas responsible for finishing off the whole was Swiss artist Joachim Luetke (known for his working with DIMMU BORGIR, RAGE or recently ARCH ENEMY –DK). Talking about the graphic design of this album, this time we tried something new and never practiced in MESHUGGAH so far. We wanted to obtain possibly full coherence together with the title and the message enclosed in texts. Many people didn’t like this idea, some of them even hate this picture. Of course they have their right to do it and we aren’t likely to persuade somebody to it. We wouldn’t provide people with so many subjects to discuss with another gloomy front. In fact you yourself admitted that “ObZen’s” cover is an eyesore (laugh).

- Well, it is. Let’s focus on music content of your new album. But first I must tell you something. Well… I was never a great fan of MESHUGGAH but “ObZen” is actually your first album which totally got me. I don’t know what the reason is but probably just because for me it’s easier to listen to. Do you think that you at last matured to serve your difficult complex music in a more intelligible form to an average recipient?
It’s intriguing interpretation (laugh). Let me put it in another way... Working on this album we didn’t aim at recording something more understandable for a man in the street. It wouldn’t be MESHUGGAH if you know what I mean. The directive that we set was to write stuff a bit more adequate to play when touring. Recently we’d gone into a completely different direction and we made an uphill work to ourselves. On “Nothing” and partially also on “Chaosphere” there were a few extremely developed compositions and on “Catch 33” we had in fact one track lasting tens minutes. I won’t conceal that playing that stuff live was….pretty complicated. I’m not saying that we’ll never write such things again but at this very moment we decided to get back to the old style of writing, to something more direct. This album is definitely more in-your-face than a few latest ones, partially due to production but mainly as a result of its content – very diversified but also more receptible. If people see it this way…it’s ok. We don’t mind, more particularly as this album is undoubtedly our next stable step towards. It can be said that this time we won the double victory.

- It’s possible to notice 2 main tendencies on this album. One is playing groovier , more diversified harmonically and rhythmically stuff like „Dancers To A Discordant System” or „Lethargica”. The other is sharp post-thrash kicks like „Bleed” or superb „Combustion”...
I don’t see this division that much. Although many weeks have passed since we finished our works, the content of “ObZen” is still too fresh for me, I have too strong and emotional attitude to this material to relate to it in an objective way. Actually I’ve always found it difficult to get out of this Meshuggah-balloon (laugh) and looking at it from the outside point of view. I know one thing, it’s diversified but very coherent album at the same time. There are in fact some mad things as well as some more direct strikes which in relation to the whole work of MESHUGGAH can be seen as commercial tracks (laugh). “Bleed” mentioned by you is kind of modern version of „Future Breed Machine”. Something very strong, complicated and catchy at the same time. Coming back to what you’ve mentioned before, thanks to such compositions as “Bleed” or “Combustion” our new album should reach also those who are allergic to MESHUGGAH (laugh). Also supporters of more crazy stuff shouldn’t be disappointed as technically “ObZen” is the hardest material to play we’ve ever made. I think that we’ve managed to join seemingly totally different elements on this album. It’s quite a contrary as you can see…