MESHUGGAH Guitarist Talks 'obZen'

David E. Gehlke from Blistering.com recently conducted a chat with MESHUGGAH guitarist Mrten Hagstrm. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

Blistering.com: How did this pairing with MINISTRY come about?

Mrten Hagstrm: Basically, they got in touch with us and asked if we wanted to support them on their last their tour. It seems like a pretty cool tour to be on. It'll be interesting because we both have that aggressive thing going, where they are very straightforward and we are not, so it's kind of a little bit of the opposite end of the scale.

Blistering.com: You guys are getting what, 45 minutes for this tour, right?

Mrten Hagstrm: Yeah, I think it's 45 minutes, I'm not 100% sure. We'll be playing two tracks off the new album. We have an opening set and a headlining set, but it's kinda difficult. Obviously, we'd like to have a little bit everything. We'll do something off "Destroy", something off "Chaosphere", "Nothing", but I don't know how much from each record, but I do know that we're aiming for two or three songs off the new record.

Blistering.com: Early reports had you going to back to the style of "Chaosphere", but it appears "obZen" is a mixture of the last three albums. Do you agree with that assessment?

Mrten Hagstrm: I wouldn't say that it was a conscious decision to go for anything in particular. If you go back and look at what we've done throughout our career, most of our albums have been a reaction to what we were doing previously. "Destroy.Erase.Improve" is a dynamic, evolved thrash metal album, where "Chaosphere" not being so dynamic and in your face and aggressive, and "Nothing" was not like that and was droning. Coming off "Catch Thirty-Three" which centers around a nightmare at 47 minutes, we were looking for a more aggressive and dynamic approach along with a live vibe and that made it inspiring.

Blistering.com: "Bleed" is arguably the best thing you've done and you put it out on your MySpace before the release of the album. In terms of performing that live, how much of a test of endurance is this song going to be?

Mrten Hagstrm: Actually, we're aiming for it. It's going to be a bitch (laughs) from a guitar point of view and drum point of view. That song is really special in that way from a technical point and the aspect of memorizing it because the song rhythmically, is one small figure and that small figure is evolving through the whole song. There are these minute changes to doing something very monotonous for a big period of time. There are more difficult things that one: you have the stamina the part, which is being able to go all the way through it because it's demanding on the pick, especially the thumb muscle which gets prone to cramping if you overdo it. The second one is obviously is keeping track and not getting lost in the hypnotic parts when it gets to be so much of the same in the minute parts. "Bleed" is probably the song that instantly says something to the listener, but I think most of the songs have a similar quality, but not to that extent. Like "Combustion" is reminiscent of old-school thrash, but in our way in 2008. You have "Lethragica" which is a slow and sludgy song, but very different. But this album is one of those albums where we're going back to the dynamics of the parts in between the songs and getting them to have an identity all their own.

Read the entire interview at www.blistering.com.