MESHUGGAH

Meshuggah's new song 'Bleed' can be heard at BraveTunes
the left-hand-side of BraveWords.com now!

'Bleed' is taken from Meshuggah's forthcoming album, obZen, which is scheduled for release in North America on March 11th. The follow-up to 2005's Catch Thirty Three will contain nine songs and will have a running time of around 55 minutes.
The tracklisting for obZen is as follows:
'Combustion',
'Electric Red', 'Bleed',
'Lethargica',
'ObZen',
'This Spiteful Snake',
'Pineal Gland Optics',
'Pravus',
'Dancers To A Discordant System'.

Meshuggah drummer Tomas Haake and guitarist Mårten Hagström spoke to BW&BK recently just prior to an exclusive listening session of obZen, in Los Angeles, CA. The chat can be found here.

MESHUGGAH - "Inner Peace Or Zen Through The Obscene, Through Bloodshed And Obscenity In General"

www.BigMusicGeek.com recently caught up with MESHUGGAH guitarist Mårten Hagström to discuss the band's new album, ObZen. The following is an excerpt from the interview:

BMG: What was the main inspiration behind the title ObZen?

Mårten Hagström: “Basically, Tomas (Haake) our drummer and I were sittin’ around one night having a beer talkin’ about what we were going to do lyrically on this album because. Most of the time, he’s the one writing the lyrics. He was sayin’ that he had a bunch of lyrics lined up that he had been writing for regular songs, but we hadn’t had any chance to use them because the last few albums have had these monumentally long songs. He was sayin’ that he liked some of them very much and that he wanted to re-write them a little bit to make them more or less the usual Meshuggah style, but a little bit more to the point…a little bit uglier, basically. That, we felt, was fitting to how we thought the album was going to be like…a little bit more aggressive and to the point. That made him think about what would be a good way to sum up the lyrical aspect of this album. ObZen basically just connects the obscene with Zen Buddhism, kinda suggesting that maybe society is finding its moment of inner peace or Zen through the obscene, through bloodshed and obscenity in general, ya know? That aspect of the animal in us humans, ya know?”

BMG: Is it safe to assume the world’s current "…less than stellar…" political state was at least in part an influence?

Mårten Hagström: “Yeah, we’ve never really been a political band in any way. We want people to make up their own minds in regards to when they read lyrics are about, but the whole title is a comment about how our leaders are always taking pride in how we are supposed to be so civilized, how out of the goodness of our hearts we’re doing so many great deeds. You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to see that it’s so obvious that the driving force is greed for most of what’s going on. Those who are in power are probably the ones least fit to wield that sword, ya know? It’s a very paradoxical thing which makes all those aspirations for good sound very hollow and hypocritical. It’s a comment on how we always find a way back to that primordial tug of war between pride, fear and greed…those basic ugly instincts.”

Go to this location for the complete interview.

MESHUGGAH - Extreme Metal Riff Lesson

Posted on Friday, July 11, 2008 at 14:35:47 EST

MetalKult.com reports:

"On May 1st, 2008, when Sweden’s technical metal giants MESHUGGAH came to New York on MINISTRY's C-U-La-Tour, guitarists Fredrik Thordendal and Marten Hagstrom (above left and right, respectively) stopped by MetalKult’s Manhattan headquarters for a video interview and riff lesson.

Meshuggah were also touring in support of their latest album, Obzen, which was released on March 11th on Nuclear Blast.

In this rare footage, the guitarists talk about their eight-string guitars, extraterrestrial solos, challenging polyrhythms, and time-signature misconceptions, before demonstrating how to play some classic riffs from their catalog, including 'Rational Gaze', 'Bleed', 'Electric Red', 'Pravus', 'New Millenium Cyanide Christ', 'The Mouth Licking What You’ve Bled' and 'Future Breed Machine'."

See the video at MetalKult.com.