What can I say in my little introduction for this Meshuggah interview? Not much, because I’m just a little man compared to a band that by many is treated as one of the most influential groups in metal. I can only be grateful to live in times that I can listen to their music, see them in concerts and have fun phone conversations with them as if we were best friends. I don’t remember laughing so hard and so many times on the phone... ever... and this is the first time I ever spoke to the guy! Marten Hagstrom (guitar) was great, he was funny and entertaining... like his band. If you’ve never heard them I don’t know how the hell you found your way to this site...

Chris


How did idea of “Rare Trax” come to life?

Basically, it was an idea from our boss Markus Tiger at Nuclear Blast in Germany. We come back from touring after the “Chaosphere” album, we went on the European tour and went to tour with the Slayer in States and what basically happened was we had to decide what to release next. We though we would like to start working on the new album right away but that wouldn’t be finished soon enough for Nuclear Blast, so they suggested we put together a rare tracks album and we said OK, why not and that’s what we did.

What did you guys do over those three years since your last regular studio album?

The first year, actually almost year and a half was just touring and then we were supposed to finish the “Rare Trax” in just six months but we had some problems with CD-ROM staff as video footage and we also had a bit of a trouble putting together all those master tapes, finding them and putting them over to digital for mastering. So, that’s why it took so much time.

The promo letter says that in ’96 you, Jans K. and Tomas had some free studio time and you thought of doing something but didn’t know what and result is 'Don’t Speak' and 'By Emptyness Abducted' which were never meant to be released. How often do you have free time and do something like that and do you still have some songs on future rare tracks?

Not often. [laughs] I would say that pretty much was the only time. What happened back then was that Fredrik (Thordendal) was doing his solo album and that’s why we had a lot of time on our hands and we were just messing around for fun in the studio where Jens (Kidman) was working back then at that time. However, I know that Jens has some stuff that he’s recorded by himself and I have some stuff that I’ve recorded by myself when we were just messing around but it’s not like regular Meshuggah stuff. You know, for fun...

Are you saying more stuff for future “Rare Trax”?

[laughs] I hope we won’t have to release another “Rare Trax”. I guess in a couple of years we’ll have a few songs that will be laying around but 'Don’t Speak' and ‘By Emptyness Abducted’ are pretty Meshuggah like songs, the stuff that we have written since then and haven’t been included isn’t that much Meshuggah style.

It had to be quite a party since you even recorded ‘War’ for Fredrik’s 30th birthday... How did that happen?

Oh yeah, it was quite a party. [laughs] Actually we recorded an entire album with six or seven songs but every song had like a very different style. We had a ‘War’ song which is near death metal or whatever grind-core metal and we had a couple of soft songs... what we wanted to do was to make an album where all the lyrics were really downgrading towards Fredrik [laughs] ... we had a lot of fun doing it.

‘New Millennium...’ is going to be one of my all time favorite videos, it’s simply hilarious... who came up with this idea?

Thanks. Actually I can’t remember cause that idea come up when we were in the tour bus on the Slayer tour and we had a day off cause we had to cancel the show and we were just riding. We had a 10 hour drive or something like that so pretty much we were stuck in the bus and Gustav Hielm, our bass player, he had this cam-coder with him and I don’t know who come up with that idea but we were talking about how really hilarious would it be if we could make a video riding the bus, playing air-guitars and just making fools out of ourselves. [laughs] We recorded this just for our own sake it wasn’t meant to be released...

Based on ‘New Millennium...’ and ‘Tour and Studio Clips’ video it seems like you guy had a really good time during the US tour with Slayer... tell me something unusual that happened during that tour.

Oh man, what didn’t happen. You know, the weird thing is that you always remember the bad things about the tour or something like that cause it sort of sticks to your mind but one thing that was really great about this tour was when we met up with Fear Factory, I think it was somewhere in Main, the tours met up so it was like a multi-band deal. We had a party on Fear Factory bus and that night was really great cause everybody was just partying. I was like six bands just had a blast. That was a really fun thing. Another thing that was really really great was in San Francisco cause Exodus, Testament and Machine Head come around and we had a great party after the show. It was so cool... us, Slayer and all those bands... we had a blast.

A lot of bands either listen to your music or dream of playing with you. Who would you like to play with?

One band that was great playing with obviously was Slayer. We grow up on this, personally I listened to a lot of Slayer when I was young so going on the road with them was like a child's dream. We would really really like to go on tour with Strapping Young Lad cause the stuff Devin Townsend has been putting out I think it’s really cool. That would be really fun to play with live. Also, of course all of our young heroes we ever had we would like to go out on the road with, like Testament and bands like that...

Outside of the band, do you guys hang out together or each one of you lives your separate lives?

Well it all depends on the time of the year... Oh, we hang out a lot but we live in different parts of the city so it’s not always as easy to just swing by each other. When we are on the road or when we are working together we see so much of each other that when we have a holiday we’ll leave town on our separate things just to chill out but we all hang out and we all have parties together cause we’ve been friends for so long. I know Tomas (Haake) since I was 6 I think and we were friend before anything else, you know. And this same is between Jens and Fredrik. We have great friends base in our band before anything else. It comes before the music.

Have you ever bit the crap out of the members of another band?

[laughs all the time till the next question] No, we haven’t. I don’t think we ever felt like it either. We’ve come along with all the bands we’ve met. We’ve never been in any great fight, not among ourselves and not with the other bands.

What’s your favorite alcohol?

Right now... Beer.

Who’s the craziest and most unpredictable member of Meshuggah?

I would say that we all are but it depends on when you’re asking. I mean Fredrik is pretty unpredictable sometimes but I would say that we all have our moments. [laughs] If it’s something I learned during all those years it’s very hard to predict what anyone in this band will do and I can’t even predict what I’m gonna do myself [laughs] It’s pretty hard...[laughs]

Do you realize that you guys are probably the most unpredictable band in a whole world?

Thanks, I take it as a complement. I mean I never though of us as being the most unpredictable band but we always do whatever comes into our minds. It doesn’t matter how silly, strange, weird or whatever it is. We only consider one thing and that is ‘do we like what we’re doing, are we having fun?’ If we come up with an idea that we thing is good we go with it and I think that’s what keeps it interesting for us being in a band.

Is anyone of you involved in any side projects right now?

Not at the moment. Right now we are not doing any side projects that I know of. Jans has been writing some stuff on his own and I’ve been writing some stuff on my own and I know that Frederick has a couple of thing lying around but nothing serious. Nothing that is a band or even going to be an album.

When can we expect new studio release? Do you have any songs written yet?

We have stuff written but not that much but we have all the lyrics and we have a couple of great cover ideas so I would say if we’re lucky and everything goes the way we want it to we’ll be able to release it in like early 2002, first half of 2002.

Any plans to promote this CD with a tour?

No, not at the moment. It might happen that we would but I’m not sure. You never know, we might swing over to the States for a week or do a couple of shows here in Europe but the way we see it, it’s a way better to our fans to get a real album real soon and then we’ll tour on that one really extensively instead. Cause if we go on tour now and tour this “Rare Trax” album I think that it would take too long for us to complete a new album.

I guess that would be all, it was a pleasure to talk to you. Any last words?

Thanks a lot man it was great. It was nice talking to you too. As for the last words; come check us out next time we are around and buy all our shit so we can get rich anytime soon. [laughs]