Meshuggah
This article is about the band Meshuggah. For the Terry Pratchett's Discworld character see Feet of Clay.
Meshuggah, whose name is taken from the
Hebrew and
Yiddish word for "crazy," is a five-piece
tech metal band from
Umeå,
Sweden who use extended
polymetric passages, complex drum patterns, odd
time signatures, angular, dissonant
guitar riffs, and harsh, atonal vocals.
Meshuggah was formed in
Umeå in
1987; two years later, the band released their first record, an
EP entitled
Psykisk Testbild (which can be roughly translated as "psychological test picture", perhaps in reference to a
Rorschach Test image). This recording displayed a straightforward
thrash metal influenced sound, with some strains along the lines of
Metallica's concurrent releases. There were also hints of more complex music in the songwriting. As the group grew older, they further refined the technicality of their musicianship and songwriting. This lead to a harsher sound.
While the band's music is extremely intense and aggressive, the members often demonstrate a strong sense of humour: their
video for "New Millennium Cyanide Christ" consisted of the five band members sitting inside their tour bus
headbanging and
air guitaring to the song. Promotional photos of the band often include comical grimacing.
In late
2005, Meshuggah were nominated for a Swedish
Grammy for the album
Catch Thirty-Three.
Some bands such as the
Tool,
Deftones,
Fear Factory,
Sevendust,
The Dillinger Escape Plan and
God Forbid have cited Meshuggah as influences.
Among the band's most recognizable qualities are
lead guitar player
Fredrik Thordendal's smooth, clean,and jazz-ish highly influenced
Allan Holdsworth-esque solos, singer Jens Kidman's vocals, which resemble something of a robotic bark; the churning, dissonant rhythm guitars and the polymetric drum beats. In a typical Meshuggah song, drummer
Tomas Haake plays two separate rhythms: a standard 4/4 beat with his hands, and a completely different metrical subdivision with his feet. The guitars mostly follow the
bass drum work, creating an awkwardly pulsating rhythmic pattern to work as the basis of the song.
To give an example, the main riff of the song "New Millennium Cyanide Christ" from their
1998 album
Chaosphere follows the aforementioned blueprint. Haake beats a rather slow 4/4 rhythm with his hands, while the bass drums and guitars play a repetitive 23/16 rhythm pattern on top of it. As the subdivided pattern is repeated, the pattern's accents shift to different beats on each repetition. After repeating the 23/16 pattern five times, a shorter 13/16 pattern is played once. These patterns sum up to 128 16th notes, which equals exactly 8 measures in 4/4 meter.
The band has evolved through a number of stylisitic periods, while "Destroy Erase Improve" and "Chaosphere" have a more distinct off time thrash influence, "Nothing" and "Catch 33" have a sound close to the vein of
groove metal, often with much repetition.
While live drums were obviously not abandoned, a unique decision was made to use programmed drum patterns using Tomas Haake's "Drumkit From Hell" sample library on the latest album
Catch Thirty-Three, not only providing a more precise and mechanized drumscape, but also making drum beat creativity a more collaborative effort amongst all of the band members. It cemented the album as one of the band's most complex works to date. The band members have, however, stated in several interviews that the decision to use programmed drums was due to the lack of time given by their label to produce the record.
On their latest records ("I" and "Catch 33"), guitarists Thordendal and Hagström use custom-made Nevborn, and
Ibanez eight-string guitars. These guitars add two low strings to allow the crushing, heavy riffs to be played in even lower registers. On Nothing, they originally intended to use the unfinished early versions of Nevborn 8-string guitars, but they wouldn't stay in tune for long and thus they opted to use downtuned 7-string guitars instead.
Psykisk Testbild (EP, 1989)
Contradictions Collapse (1991)
None (EP, 1994)
Selfcaged (USA version) (1995)
Selfcaged (1995)
Destroy Erase Improve (1995)
The True Human Design (1997)
Chaosphere (1998)
Rare Trax (2001)
Nothing (2002)
I (EP, 2004)
Catch Thirty-Three (2005)
*"
Female Nipples" (2007)
* A music video exists for the song "New Millennium Cyanide Christ" that takes place on the Meshuggah tour bus, and showcases rampant headbanging, air drumming, Jens Kidman using a red ballpoint as a fake microphone and Fredrik Thordendal's impressive
air guitar skills. The video can be found on the
Rare Trax CD. (also can be found on video.google.com)
* Meshuggah is the favorite metal band of
Steven Wilson of
Porcupine Tree and
Blackfield fame and co-producer of several albums by the Swedish progressive death metal band
Opeth.
*Meshuggah are clearly the greatest metal band ever.
* As stated in interviews, Meshuggah is the favorite band of
Stephen Carpenter of the
Deftones. Perhaps that's why he started to use 7-string guitars and tries to push the
Deftones sound into a more progressive direction.
*
Jack Osbourne has cited Meshuggah as a favorite band. Their song "Soul Burn" was played in an episode of the MTV reality series
The Osbournes, in which Jack blasted it out his window in an attempt to aggravate his neighbors (but labeled the band mistakenly as "death metal from Norway").
* Progressive metal band
Tool have said that they have taken a lot of influence from Meshuggah for their newest album
10,000 Days. Guitarist Adam Jones: "I see a lot of them in us and us in them."
*
Official website*
Meshuggah Official forum*
New Millennium Cyanide Christ video at Google Video
