Trigger the Bloodshed perform as the support. Nice, energetic kick, nothing super special, but enjoyable. I miss most of their show though, as at this point I end up sitting in the Meshuggah tour bus with Tomas Haake, talking with him about “obZen”, Drumkit From Hell and other various weird things. I have great respect for Meshuggah’s drummer and his technique; therefore I’ve been really looking forward to this meeting.

WK: First of all, hello. And, considering the fact that I have this occasion, I’d like to start with something which is not directly Meshuggah related – but important and interesting. Your involvement with the Drumkit From Hell. How did this happen?

Tomas: I can talk about it, but I am not as involved as some people may think. I was at the beginning, with the first few releases, but now it’s mostly Fredrik who’s into that.

WK: So you have just recorded some samples for them, and you are not working with them anymore? That’s all?

TH: Yes. The idea came from Fredrik and this Toontrack guy, Matthias. We wanted something good for ourselves. We’ve been using drum machines for our recordings for a long time, and back then we’ve had this four track, and a simple drum machine. As soon as we’ve started using the computer, we have realized that there was nothing there which had a proper sound, you know… It was all mainstream, and we wanted something more metal. So, for the first Drumkit From Hell we have sampled my kit – and that’s it. That was my Sonor drumset I’ve had at this time… We’re still using this samples sometimes, and later we have recorded some more with my next kit as well. Now we have so much more to choose from, as Fredrik is involved with Toontrack and we’re getting all their releases, but personally I don’t fuck with it so much nowadays. I just have whatever set of samples I have on my computer, my own kit sampled, plus another snare drum samples and that’s all.

WK: That’s actually quite surprising; all around Internet you can read, that Drumkit From Hell is still being supported by your samples, and so on.

TH: I don’t know. I’ve done some work with them, played some hits and that’s it… Nowadays they have this new guy, who played with Genesis for a while – and he does all the loops, in much better studios; loops, beats… So they have a new, great sounding drummer and they record everything… Tons of different stuff. You can pretty much find any kind of drum sound you need there.

WK: Ok, no more questions about the DFL. Well, maybe last one… You have recorded “I” with it. Is that true?

TH: No, that’s another rumor.

WK: Well, I am not surprised. It’s a complicated thing, I agree, but not something above your standards, I would not see any point…

TH: It was recorded randomly, rapidly; each part was not charted out, I wasn’t playing the specific thing; trying to stay in a certain frame, vibe, playing the bits. We have not rehearsed it, so I haven’t really had a strict pattern to follow. And then we have edited all the chunks together, and the guitars were played bar by bar, because no one had known what I was playing. Two bars at the time, haha. When you will listen to it, you will hear that it has some glitches, it does not sound artificial, so I don’t get where people are getting this idea from. It sounds more organic than it would sound if it’ll be programmed. The only thing that we have released with Drumkit From Hell programmed drumming was “Catch 33”. And that album has absolutely no live drums on it, it’s all from the computer.

WK:?

TH: That’s a completely different story. Different project for us; instead of playing separately, we’ve been all sitting in front of one computer, and as soon as we would get a guitar part, I would program the drums for it. All those riffs, all drum parts were changing, guitars were re-recorded few times, modified… All that chunk of music was two and a half to three hours long. We have compressed it to the forty seven minutes afterwards. Everything was recorded digitally, and it was done – so if we’ve had decided that I should learn to play it as it was on these forty seven minutes, it would just sound differently from what we’ve already had. If the drums were re-recorded, we would need to record the guitars again too, and no one really knew the riffs, as it was all the moment: “Ok, so I am recording this guitar now!”… So, together with the fact that we just wanted something less organic, and that we wanted to say “fuck you, we want to do it our way” – we did it this way. We were always open about it.

To us, it’s about the end product, not about how you get there. A lot of bands, especially in metal are doing that, recording the computer controlled drums, but they would never admit that. Or, a lot of bands would record the drums and then they would cut it and paste, bit by bit, to sound more solid. But they will never tell about it…

WK: Haha… Good stuff. Ok, let’s talk about “obZen” a bit. Can you tell me something about the concept behind it? I know the general idea, obscenity and Zen, but... Anything more you would like to add?

TH: Just as you've said; and the contents and lyrics also tie in with the concept for the cover. Entire album is more back towards the angry outlook on the society around us, bleak outlook of negative side of human condition… Not exactly the way I see the world surrounding me every day, but certainly about something that you can see after switching the TV on. There’s a lot of fucking pain in the world, inflicted by humans on other humans… It sounds like something very, very dramatic and like an extreme look on things, but at the same time it goes with the music; and for me this music has a dark and broody vibe in it – so it’s hard to have happy lyrics.

WK: And what about the cover? I know it has been outsourced. Wasn’t that you who made covers for all the previous releases?

TH: Yeah, that was me. Well, for this one I’ve had a clear vision of what I want it to be looking like; the person, the pose… I wanted this character to be more androgynous type of being, and I knew that I couldn’t really do it in Photoshop. That’s pretty much the only program I have been using before with other albums, and for this one I knew I would need someone who’s also good with photography. That’s why I have asked Joachim Luetke to help. I gave him my idea; he chose the different models… And finally did the cover with a composite of two of them; the bottom part of the body belongs to female, sitting in the lotus position, and top part is a man.

WK: Thanks. An awkward question now; I am sure you do realize that your music has changed pretty drastically over the last few releases. Do you consider it to be more natural progression, or are you actually pushing yourselves to change it more and more on every new CD?

TH: Yes and no, I would say. I mean, we push ourselves to do something different on every new album, and for some albums it works more than for the others. Like for example “Nothing” after the “Chaosphere”, two different CD’s. And then “I” – one track, long EP with randomly played music, and one even knows how to play it anymore as it was all randomly produced. Then, “Catch 33”, more listeners’ trip than the typical Meshuggah metal; I see what you mean thought, this one turned out to be more approachable…

WK: Yeah, overall of all your music is really approachable, ha ha…

TH: Ha ha, indeed. Well, let’s just say that it’s different.

WK: As about being approachable and influential… Meshuggah has inspired many bands during the 21 year career. Do you have any favorites of the bands, who are giving you guys as their influences?

TH: I really like Gojira. I haven’t really listened to a lot of their stuff, but the things I have heard are great. That’s probably the band that I find the closest to what we do. Textures’ got a bit different vibe about them. There’s Mnemic too, which I like – half type of Meshuggah, kind of… But right now I’d say Gojira and Scarve, with their “Irradiant” album, and “Organic hallucinosis” by Decaptitated. Pretty sick album!

WK: Is there anything else that you are listening to nowadays?

TH: Oh yeah! That’s actually why I don’t listen to Gojira, Dillinger Escape Plan or Textures. Well, I may listen to one or two tracks but I don’t do this in general… Not a lot. I don’t bring their CD’s on tour, it’s not like that. What I listen to is less metal… I am old school. Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Judas Priest… Southern rock, Terry Reid… Sometimes even Allman Brothers.

WK: Well, I am not surprised. It is in fact pretty common that metal musicians do not listen to the metal music in their “private time”… Even you need to relax.

TH: Yeah, I think so. The more ear you put into playing metal, the more relaxing and calming music you are looking for…

Somehow, we have migrated – from word to word – to the old, Polish band named “Kobong”. Tomas has never heard them before, and… After talking for a while, I have decided to continue with the proper interview.

WK: Kobong has led me to my next question. What do you think about mp3’s and all that stuff?

TH: I still don’t know if for us the whole downloading thing is good or bad. The sad part about it is that CD sales are going down and they will be going down even more; and it’s really, really hard for us to stay afloat as a band. And we’re in a really good position when you will compare us with some other less popular bands… We have fairly decent recording deals, but it’s not easy with all this mp3’s going around.

WK: Well, I am sure that if not all downloads, you wouldn’t have so many fans… At the end, if someone likes the CD he’s going to buy it, I think.

TH: Yes, and this just shows that there’s more than one side of it. We as a band just have to use it for the best.

WK: Last one! We’re getting to the end. Do you like playing in England? That may sound lame but it’s actually quite interesting to know what you think about this particular place…

TH: I love the crowd – it’s great. I hate your showers (strange ;) and I don’t fancy the food. The people are great, that’s the most important thing really…

WK: Any favorite country? The one you like to play in? Except the Sweden, of course… The public everywhere varies a lot.

TH: All these places vary as you said, and they’re all great! We’d love to play in South America and Japan – never been there before. Russia, Australia… New Zealand… We’re going to go there soon, but still South America will be on the list of the places to go. South Africa… Hard to say what we like the most. We haven’t been to so many places yet…

WK: This is the last one. Really. What about the new album?

TH: We have some new stuff. Some bits and pieces, but I don’t want to tell you right yet.. Ok, maybe one thing; we’re looking to use the guitars bit differently. You need to wait for more.

WK: Thank you! I just hope that you won’t go acoustic Opeth style. Haha. Have a good evening! And I am sure that we will both enjoy the show…

TH: Thanks. See you there!

For more on the band check out www.meshuggah.net
http://www.myspace.com/meshuggah

Interviewed by Wojtek Kutyla

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