Meshuggah – Mårten Hagström

Meshuggah have been a consistent and punishing force in extreme metal for well over a decade. Their use of downtuned 8-string guitars and strange, polyrhythmic rhythm styles has had them without peer in the metal world.  They return to Australia’s shores this February to take part in this year’s massive Soundwave festival. Metal Obsession’s Sam Maher caught up with guitarist Mårten Hagström to talk about their upcoming Australian shows, their new album that is just set to be released and why Meshuggah sounds like Meshuggah.

Metal Obsession: You guys are about to play on Soundwave for the second time, did your experiences last time make you look forward to this or dread it to a certain extent?

Mårten Hagström: We are mainly just not looking forward to the heat, especially because we are Swedes, you know, and we really didn’t enjoy that last time. But aside from that we are really looking forward to playing on Soundwave again!

MO: I think last time you played here [Sydney, 2009] was one of the hottest days of that year, and certainly the hottest Soundwave we’ve had, so hopefully this year won’t be quite as bad.

MH: [laughs] Hey that’s good to hear, that’s what we’re hoping too!

MO: What can we be looking forward to as far as setlists are concerned? Are you planning on playing anything from your upcoming opus Koloss?

MH: Umm…we’re really…actually…I don’t know [laughs]. We’ve been discussing it, about playing those songs, and we haven’t really decided yet. If we do it would only be like, you know, one or two songs, but the thing is we are not sure that we want the first time people hear these new songs is in a festival setting, you know? But we haven’t really decided yet, so maybe.

MO: Is it possible that you will be playing the new songs in the Sideshows with Devin Townsend?

MH: That’s more probable. It’s a slightly clearer atmosphere.  We will be sitting down this week to decide those setlists, but we have talked about playing one of the new songs on those shows.

MO: This is going to be an unusual time for you guys to be touring because you have a new album just about to be released, so does that mean we might be hearing some more slightly unusual songs in the live sets?

MH: Well, we will be discussing that at that stage too, about potentially putting some of those sorts of songs into the sets. I would certainly like to, but the main problem that we run into is that we will, at Soundwave, be playing like a 30 minute set so…you know, we want to play all the songs that the fans want to hear and that we like to play so it doesn’t really leave much room for that sort of stuff, you know? But like you said it is perhaps more probable to happen at the other shows but we will decide all of that a bit closer to the date.

MO: Alright, that makes sense. Now, I don’t know if you have heard about this, but apparently the world is supposed to be ending in 2012. This wouldn’t have anything to do with the new Meshuggah album coming out would it?

MH: Well…I don’t know [laughs a lot]. But isn’t it supposed to end in December, right?

MO: Yeah, that’s true…maybe we just need a bit of time for Koloss to sink in.

MH: Ah, yeah maybe that’s it. Perhaps we just need to give people enough to time to properly understand it [laughs].

MO: From what I’ve heard about the album so far, from interviews you guys have done to this point, it sounds like this new album is going to be slower, darker, more groovy…does that sound like about the right impression?

MH: Ah, yeah I’d say so. It sounds…well, it sounds a bit different. It is a little bit slower, but it is also fast in places, but yeah it definitely has a lot of groove, it really feels very groovy, but in a darker sort of way, I guess. We always want to try to do something different with our albums and I think this one is certainly different from the last, you know…it’s not really exactly like stuff we have done before. This is something that sound a lot more like the band, you know. You can hear much more of the whole band on this one. So yeah…that’s it.

MO: So what was the writing process like on this one? I heard it was a little different to how you guys have done things before, a little bit more collaborative?

MH: Well, yes and no. Creatively it was kind of how we usually do it. I mean, we did things a bit differently for Catch Thirty Three where we were kind of all like in the same room writing stuff, but normally we just kind of have people bringing in pretty much entire songs and then we all just kind of go from there. So that’s how we normally do things. But with this album there was more collaboration with how we structure everything. So rather than someone bringing in a song and we would just be cool with that we would kind of just be writing parts of songs I guess and then we spent a long time, as a band, figuring out how we would structure it all, figure how to fit everything together. So we were all still writing, I mean doing that actual writing of the songs, individually kind of like how we usually do, but this time we worked more as a band to actually structure everything.

MO: Alright, let’s talk about that gear that you used on this new album. First of all, have you and Fredrik [Thorndendal, lead guitar] made any alterations to your custom 8-strings?

MH: Ah, no not really. We just used the same custom guitars to record that we’ve been using for a while now. But our custom guitars are actually about to be released to the public by Ibanez, you know, our signature models rather than the kind of stock 8-string. In fact they actually made some small…uh, additions to the guitars so they are not exactly the same as ours. And the additions that they made are better! [laughs] so yeah, they just changed some of the specs and I played one and they actually sound better, so that’s kinda funny. I don’t quite know why everyone else is getting the better guitars [laughs].

MO: So for this album, talking both in the studio and on the live stage, are you going Axe-Fx, Line 6…or are using any real amps?

MH: It was all Axe-Fx, definitely.

MO Live also?

MH: It’s such a good system. We’ve tried a lot of different things over the years, but it’s definitely Axe-Fx for us.

MO: Have you been happy doing the direct input thing onstage, or have you been thinking of doing anything differently?

MH: No, not really, we’ve been pretty happy doing it that way. It’s just so easy, you can just run a line out to front of house and it always sounds good and tight and all that. The only thing we have been thinking about has been perhaps moving to in-ear monitors, just because having the monitors is a little bit restricting, you kind of have to stay in one place, but we’re not sure about that just yet. But yeah, the Axe-Fx way is just amazing man.

MO: You guys have inspired a whole new “scene”, if you will, in metal, the so-called “Djent” scene. Do any of the guys in the band listen to that music, are any of you fans of this new sort of stuff coming out?

MH: Um…well, the thing is we haven’t really been listening to a lot of new music coming out, we don’t really listen to music while we are writing and we have been fairly busy for the last year or so. I mean, we are all certainly aware of that stuff and from what I’ve heard it all sounds really cool, but I haven’t actually heard very much of it myself. I’ve heard a bit of Tesseract’s stuff and that’s pretty cool, but that’s mostly it. I think it’s the same for the other guys as well, we haven’t been kind of keeping up with the new music.

MO: Can I just jump on something you said in there, that you guys don’t really listen to much music while you are writing…I find that kind of interesting. You guys don’t tend to look for inspiration while you are writing, it all just kind of comes from yourselves?

MH: No. I would hate to be in a position where stuff that is done is actually coming from something that I was listening to. Because for us, everything has to come from inside, you know, from our imagination. We have to play because inspiration, or…whatever you want to call it, is possible. It’s always at the back of your mind, you know, this stuff that is…that is random, you know. And we try to find that. I think it’s the same for the others as well, we are always just trying to create things ourselves, we never want to become something that someone else has written, you know? We are not like, ‘Hey, come check out this awesome band that I just found on the internet’…we just don’t work like that.

MO: Yeah that kind of makes sense. I suppose it goes some way to explaining why Meshuggah sounds so different. Your sound is really kind of without peer.

MH: Well, yeah you know that may be true, I’ve never really thought about it like that. I mean, we’ve changed but I think that’s just because we’ve grown, you know, people grow, but it’s not because there have been changes in metal. We have changed our music but it hasn’t really been because there have been any changes outside, it’s just because we have changed as musicians.

MO: Alright, that’s really interesting. Ok, this last question is one that I have put to all of the bands I’ve interviewed and I’ve invariably produced some very interesting stories. What I’m interested in is if you’ve had any interesting live situations, accidents that have happened onstage, all this sort of thing?

MH: Haha, I’m sure. But you know, I mean, I’ve been asked this question before and I have never really been able to think of something. I mean, obviously we’ve had those sorts of things happen but I can’t really remember any, they were probably just funny at the time. We’ve had accidents happen onstage, I’m sure every band has had something, but they were all just kind of normal. But…[thinks for a while]…we did have this one pretty funny situation.
We were opening for Tool, and it was the last show of the tour, and we didn’t really know if they were gonna do anything.

We were about to start our last song, which happened to be “Future Breed Machine” and then all of a sudden the whole crowd starts laughing…I mean, really laughing. We were really confused, we couldn’t see anything going on. We were looking around, there was nobody onstage, nothing was wrong onstage. We thought it might have been the visuals, because Tool have the massive visual display, but there was nothing on that. We didn’t get it. Then we look up and the guys from Tool are descending from the roof with Stonehenge, you know, like from Spinal Tap, They had it set up so they were dressed like dwarves and they had the Stonehenge, and man the crowd was just laughing and we were like…oh man. It was just so funny because we had no idea what was going on, the crowd was laughing and we couldn’t see what was happening

MO: This is all while you were playing the song?

MH: Yeah, we were in the middle of the song! Yeah man. I mean, you know the whole last-show-of-the-tour prank is pretty common but normally it’s on the stage, you know, like a stage invasion. These guys actually had the whole Stonehenge thing from the ceiling. It was great.

SOUNDWAVE FESTIVAL VENUES AND DATES FOR 2012

BRISBANE: 25TH FEBRUARY – SOUNDWAVE FESTIVAL @ RNA SHOWGROUNDS / SOLD OUT

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=246313265416952

SYDNEY: 26TH FEBRUARY – SOUNDWAVE FESTIVAL @ OLYMPIC PARK / SOLD OUT
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=233867790003182

MELBOURNE: 2ND MARCH – SOUNDWAVE FESTIVAL @ MELB SHOWGROUNDS / SOLD OUT
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=243654682348739

ADELAIDE: 3RD MARCH – SOUNDWAVE FESTIVAL @ BONYTHON PARK
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=279093168779036

PERTH: 5TH MARCH – SOUNDWAVE FESTIVAL @ CLAREMONT SHOWGROUNDS
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=282403391778781

Devin Townsend, Meshuggah and Dredg Sidewaves: Presented by Soundwave Touring

TUESDAY 28TH FEBRUARY SYDNEY, THE FACTORY- LICENSED ALL AGES
www.oztix.com.au

WEDNESDAY 29th FEBRUARY MELBOURNE, THE FORUM- 18+
www.ticketmaster.com.au

For more info, head on over to www.soundwavfestival.com