Recently, acclaimed Meshuggah rhythm guitarist Mårten Hagström, always a man of many words and interesting stories, was kind enough to speak with us regarding, among many other things, the highly-anticipated release of the group’s latest sonic masterpiece ObZen…

Todd: What was the main inspiration behind the title ObZen?

Mårten Hagström: “Basically…Tomas (Haake) our drummer and I were sittin’ around one night having a beer talkin’ about what we were going to do lyrically on this album because…most of the time, he’s the one writing the lyrics.  He was sayin’ that he had a bunch of lyrics lined up that he had been writing for regular songs, but we hadn’t had any chance to use them because the last few albums have had these monumentally long songs.  He was sayin’ that he liked some of them very much and that he wanted to re-write them a little bit to make them more or less the usual Meshuggah style, but a little bit more to the point…a little bit uglier, basically.  That, we felt, was fitting to how we thought the album was going to be like…a little bit more aggressive and to the point.  That made him think about what would be a good way to sum up the lyrical aspect of this album.  ObZen basically just connects the obscene with Zen Buddhism, kinda suggesting that maybe society is finding its moment of inner peace or Zen through the obscene, through bloodshed and obscenity in general, ya know?  That aspect of the animal in us humans, ya know?”

Todd: Is it safe to assume the world’s current ‘…less than stellar…’ political state was at least in part an influence?

Mårten: “Yeah…we’ve never really been a political band in any way.  …We want people to make up their own minds in regards to when they read lyrics are about, but the whole title is a comment about how our leaders are always taking pride in how we are supposed to be so civilized…how out of the goodness of our hearts we’re doing so many great deeds.  You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to see that it’s so obvious that the driving force is greed for most of what’s going on.  Those who are in power are probably the ones least fit to wield that sword, ya know?  It’s a very paradoxical thing which makes all those aspirations for good sound very hollow and hypocritical.  It’s a comment on how we always find a way back to that primordial tug of war between pride, fear and greed…those basic ugly instincts.”

Todd: Prior to the beginning of the recording process for ObZen, was there any desire to work with programmed drums as you had on previous releases?

Mårten: “No.  …Actually, the only album that had programmed drums on it was Catch Thirtythree.  And that was all programmed drums.  There were no live drums played on that one.  We did that on Catch Thirtythree for two reasons.  First of all, it was because of the efficiency of it.  We thought they sounded great and if you program them right, you might be able to hear the program, but they’re not far away from real drums.  Also, when building a song for forty seven minutes made it much more time efficient to have the ability to go back and change something so quickly without having to re-record so much stuff.  So that was a major reason.  Another reason was that we knew people were going to be really pissed off (laughs).  People were like ‘You can’t do that.  You’re a Metal musician.  You have to play your own drums’.  We’re very much against those types of notions…that you have to do anything.  You can do whatever the fuck you want as long as you get the results.  It’s the end product that counts, ya know?  …On this album, Tomas is back behind the kit because it’s just much better that way.  Especially coming back to an album that is more aggressive and maybe more live-orientated than the last couple of releases have been.”

Todd: Were there major differences in the way you approached the recording of ObZen in comparison to previous releases?

Mårten: “Well, the similarities (to Catch Thirtythree) were that we all worked together in the studio basically at the same time.  We have our own studio that we work out of which makes it so that were never on the clock.  We don’t have to worry money-wise how long it takes us in our own studio since we do everything ourselves now, ya know?  What we did with Catch Thirtythree was that everyone was listening to the newly updated song every day and whoever felt inspired at that time just sat down and tried it out.  We all work that way…just sorta brainstorming together.  Whoever came up with the perfect fit for what needed to be added next...we used that part.  This time, we were all in the studio together, but everyone was sitting in their own room.  So I was sitting in my room, writing and trying to come up with what I thought was cool…and Fredrik was sitting in his room basically doing the same thing.  So it was kinda cool that way.  …You might come up with something one day after sitting in the studio recording for eight hours straight trying to get new shit together and then another day, I might wake up and not feel inspired, so I’ll just walk around and listen to what the other guys are playing (laughs).  We had a kind cross feedback there, which was kinda cool.”

Todd: Is it safe to assume you’re recording everything digitally or are there still certain analog aspects to the overall process?

Mårten: “Yeah, we’re doing most of it digitally.  We’re doing our recordings straight onto a computer hard disc…it’s the most efficient way to do it.  But it’s not just about the efficiency.  It’s a matter of being in control, I guess.  We’ve always produced ourselves to a certain extent, although back in the early days, we might have used a co-producer.  We were always the guys who knew a little bit of what we wanted out of ourselves and our sound and we try to refine that a little bit every time we make an album.  Now recently, with the last couple of albums, we’ve been in our own studio, which makes the situation ideal with not having to rush anything.  …It’s a cost thing, ya know?  We can’t spend the same amount of money on time that a real big studio would.”

Todd: What prompted the group to begin incorporating polymetric passages into the arrangements of your songs?  Was this a conscious decision or simply a byproduct of the creative process?

Mårten: “I have no idea (laughs).  Honestly…we’ve been around for a long time and we’ve been experimenting with what we are for such a long time that it’s just second nature.  We never think about applying new tools just for the sake of doing it.  We’re the product of what we grew up listening to.  We’re very inspirational-driven people.  We’re very lazy, but when we get the spark, we really get rolling.  The common denominator between the four of us as far as what we want to put out on an album is that we want to keep it interesting.  Somehow, for whatever reason, what comes out on an album by Meshuggah is what intrigues us at that time.  I think (lead guitarist) Fredrik (Thordendal) put it best when he said ‘When God comes knocking, you’d better make damn sure you’re home’ as far as inspiration goes.  There’s not a lot of preconception involved.  We don’t think about it a lot beforehand.  We can think about what we might add or take away at a later stand point.  …It’s all a very spur of the moment thing, so it’s very hard to say that we started using polymetric rhythms for this or that reason.  That was never a factor.  It just happened.”

Todd: What was the main motivation behind the group re-recording and re-releasing Nothing?  To be honest, I’ve always been rather fond of the original…

Mårten: “Well, that’s something where we were really just indulging ourselves (laughs).  When discussing the re-recording and re-release of Nothing, we realized that we had already put it out there and that people who listen to the album will take it at face value because no one outside of the band knows what we were aiming for.  But we know what we were aiming for and we didn’t mean for Nothing to come out the way that it did (laughs).  Even though there’s nothing wrong with the original album, we wanted an opportunity to make it right because we were really pressed for time back then.  We were heading out for (2002’s) OzzFest and we didn’t know if we were going to make it in time.  When we mixed it, we were barely standing up, ya know?  We were so tired…we had been up for so many days that it was just ridiculous.  We didn’t know what we were doing.  … Fredrik was saying that if one of these days we find ourselves not in songwriting mode or not on tour or something and we want something to do just to keep rolling, we should try doing this just to see if we can make it as good of an album as we wanted it to be.”

Todd: Aside from the mix, what elements underwent the largest transformation?

Mårten: “…First and foremost, the guitars.  On the Nothing album, the original, we were playing seven string guitars on it that were tuned like an eight string.  So what happened is that the consistency of the notes really, really sucked.  They (the guitars) really couldn’t handle it.  They would get out of tune all the time.  I’d go and play one riff, realize that I missed it, go in and do the overdub and then realize that ‘Hey, I nailed it, but now it’s out of tune’.  I’d have to go and re-tune every five minutes or every two and half minuets, so it wasn’t and ideal way to record the guitars.  So that was one of the main differences.  …Being able to go back and tweak the sound and get the tone that we wanted and play it on real eight strings which are great guitars with really great consistency.  …The second thing was that we didn’t really like how the mix was.  The bass wasn’t really as strong as we wanted it to be and a far as the drums, we really changed a lot of the cymbals.  And we remixed the whole drum kit as well because it was a rush work, ya know?  We just wanted to do it proper.”

Todd: Were the difficulties you experienced with recording of Nothing the main reason the group pursued the development of a practical eight string guitar?

Mårten: “After  Chaosphere, we kinda felt that a lot of the riffs that we were coming up with would sound a lot better if we played them all bass or something, ya know?  With three distorted bass guitars or something.  We had adapted a single string approach for some our riffing that, interestingly enough, people are attributing to the recording of Nothing when we started using the eight string guitars.  But I really think we started it with Chaosphere.  Like half of that album is very single string riff-orientated.  So you could say that we had the idea that it would work out better in a setting with a lower tuning, like with a bass guitar.  Speaking of that, we never thought of tuning it down because we knew a regular guitar wouldn’t react good to that.  It wouldn’t handle the way we want it to.  So we got in touch with this guitar builder…here in Sweden and he was like ‘I hear your ideas. You might want to let me try building some eight string prototypes’ and we took it from there.  Then we ended up trying to come up with a cool  guitar that would work out for us and he did a great job.  …We wanted to change something with it, but he wasn’t having much fun with it, so…  …Then Ibanez approached us and said ‘Hey guys…if we make you an eight string guitar, we think you’ll be happy with it.  Can we try?’ and we were like ‘Sure! Bring it on’.  They actually exceeded our expectations because the guitars turned out so great.  So the actual process has been pretty long, ya know?  There hasn’t been on significant moment.”

Todd: How would you describe the music Meshuggah creates?  You have to admit, the end result generally defies description…

Mårten: “Well, we play Metal (laughs).  But I know what you’re sayin’.  There’s a lot of ‘Math Metal’ and other labels goin’ around.  I guess I understand…there’s always been the need, in every music genre, for an order and classification, ya know?  …Where you actually try and pinpoint what someone is doing.  And whenever you do something that doesn’t really fit or maybe fits a little bit in one label and a little bit in another label, people try to come up with something new.  We play Progressive, aggressive music, ya know?  That’s the only way I can put it.  That’s not a genre or a label, but that’s the only way I can put it…  Sometimes we’re called a Black Metal band, but I wouldn’t call it that if I had to choose a label.  And I don’t think we really play Death Metal, either.  Metal is just an expression and we’ve always felt that it doesn’t really matter what you do with it as long as you make it your own.  If people have a hard time explaining what we do, then that’s a good thing.”

Todd: What are your current touring plans?

Mårten: “Well, first of all, we’re gonna be opening up for Ministry on their farewell tour.  …That’s a US tour and it goes on for eight weeks, I think.  …It stops somewhere in mid-May.  Then we’ll come back here to Sweden, have a couple of weeks off and then we’ll go do the summer festival thing off and on here until the end of August and then I think we’ll be doing a club tour of Europe.  Then, I don’t know if we’re booked yet, but we’re gonna try to go over to Japan and Australia.  …I don’t know if we’re going to make it back to the US before the end of the year”.

Todd: Looking ahead, how do you feel you’ll be received by the average die-hard Ministry fan?

Mårten: “I have no idea (laughs).  We’ve learned over the years to not anticipate those types of things.  …It’s been an issue with every band that we’ve opened up for.  You never know how you’re going to go over.  We’ve done a lot of tours where people have been like ‘If you’re opening up for Slayer, you should know that you guys are going to get a lot of shit from their fans’ and ‘When you open up for Tool, the college crowd isn’t going to get what you’re doing’, but every time, we’ve done really good (laughs).  They might hate us, they might love us…I don’t know.  I guess a lot of them can at least relate to the aggressive parts, ya know?

Todd: Aside from Sweden, where do you feel the group is best received in a live setting?

Mårten: “It depends. I wouldn’t say that Sweden is one of the top reactions that we get.  Sweden is pretty stiff when it comes to the live situation.  I would say the UK, the US and Italy are really good.  Hungary and France have been really good to us as well.  And Finland…I shouldn’t forget Finland.  So there’s been a lot of places where we’ve been doing good lately.”     

Select Discography
ObZen (2008)
Nothing (re-release) (1996)
Catch Thirtythree (2005)
I (EP) (2004)
Nothing (2002)
Rare Trax (2001)
Chaosphere (1998)
The True Human Design (EP) (1997)
Selfcaged (EP) (1995)
Destroy Erase Improve (1995)
None (EP) (1994)
Contradictions Collapse (1991)
Meshuggah (EP) (1989)

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