Meshuggah!

Meshugaas, also Mishegaas or Mishegoss: Crazy or senseless activity or behavior; craziness, meshugaas, from Hebrew:, m?šugga‘ath, a form of the above; OED, AHD)

It is therefore perfect for this band I am about to introduce you to!

This is the band Meshuggah


They were formed in 1987 in Umeå, Sweden. The band consists of Jens Kidman, Fredrik Thordendal, Tomas Haake, Mårten Hagström and D ick Lövgren.

Their style of music is a mix between extreme metal, progressive metal and avant-garde metal. Other people say, that the lead guitar player, Fredrik Thordendal, is the creator of the djent genre, which is a subgenre of progressive metal, named for an onomatopoeia for the distinctive high-gain, distorted, palm-muted, low-pitch guitar sound. Fredrik has been on a hiatus from the band since 2017, and in true Swedish fashion, they broke the news like this:

"So...we had to send our interdimensional Kazoospecialist Dr Thordendal on a mission to explore some interesting stuff. He's been asking for this assignment for quite a while and it seems now is the time to realize his aspirations. This would however leave the rest of us unable to deliver our usual tonal obscenities for quite some time... and obviously we can't have that!
So we put our five blocks of wood together and came up with a brilliant plan that we thought would be productive, intelligent and artistically mature.
We took some rolls of duct tape, a black hood, a sock with a cue ball and some rope and drove north from Stockholm in a sketchy van to fetch ourselves the prey we wanted, to fill the Kazoospot for a while. We won't get into the messy details but we can now proudly present our interim Lead Kazooist for the duration of "The Thords" hiatus: PER NILSSON!!
MAN he knows how to Kazoo!! You will meet him first time on our summer run in North America with Megadeth and be all the better for it!! Honestly, we could just send Per by himself but we decided the rest of us will tag along for moral support
*End of transmission*"

I love these guys, man!

Meshuggah is one of those bands, where the drummer constantly amazes you. Tomas Haake, is the guy. They made an album called obZen, and on that album was a song called Bleed


The thing about this song in particular, is that it took Tomas SIX months to learn. He had to invent a completely new style of play, that really took dedication from him. The entire band in general is extremely talented.

Jens Kidman is the lead singer of the band, and his style of singing is extremely challenging, namely because his voice is so high when he sings. I have never had the pleasure of seeing the band live, but I have met the drummer, Tomas. He is a super down to earth guy, who loves to talk to his fans.

I know there are some out there, who are going "Raaaaaa metal is just noise and shouting and evil stuff and no talent and just strumming some instruments"

Not Meshuggah! Their music have so many layers, that you can spend a week analyzing Bleed and still find new stuff in the song.

If you want to check out Meshuggah for yourself, their music is on YouTube and Spotify, and on tour in the US and in Europe.