MESHUGGAH: The Evil Eight-String!

Swedish aggro virtuosos MESHUGGAH are hard at work on the material for their fourth full-length album and are mere days away from completing a four-song demo for the upcoming effort, due out in June via Nuclear Blast Records. The notorious perfectionists' desire to focus all their attention on the pre-production sessions for the forthcoming CD has forced them to turn down a personal invitation from SYSTEM OF A DOWN to support the American platinum act on their upcoming US tour (a slot that eventually went to CLUTCH).

”The SYSTEM OF A DOWN tour was perfect, but the timing wasn't,” MESHUGGAH guitarist Mårten Hagström told BLABBERMOUTH.NET in an exclusive interview. “We have to get a new album out, that's the bottom line. Our vocalist Jens [Kidman] is going on vacation on January 23rd, and before he leaves, we will have the new demo done.”

The follow-up to 1998's Chaosphere sees the foursome—currently without a bassist after the recent departure of Gustav Hielm—playing in part on brand new custom-made eight-string guitars.

”The guitar is specially made by a guy who lives deep down in the Swedish woods, and it sounds fantastic. As far as I know, it's the first-ever eight-string guitar specifically designed for metal. On the demo, Fredrik [Thordenthal, guitars] and I use a prototype, but for the album recording, [we will use a more developed model]. A lot of people think this means we'll do a lot of extra-whacky stuff, fiddling around with the eight-string. But in fact, the [new] material is more simplistic, and we're using the eight-string in a similar way to SLEEP did on their Jerusalem album. The sound is evil and sinister as hell and I haven't been this excited about any of our stuff since [the 1994 mini-album] None.”

MESHUGGAH are due to produce the upcoming CD themselves at a recording studio they recently purchased via a partnership arrangement with Swedish rap/metal act CLAWFINGER.