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Sean: You guys
have been off the road for a little while now, have
you been working on any new material?
M�rten: "No, not really. We haven't
been off the road really, too much, after the Tool
tour ended we had like a month and a half off, then
we started rehearsing again for the Scandinavian tour,
it was just a short tour, about 10 days. After that
we had another few weeks off, then we started
rehearsing for this tour we're doing right now so,
we're pretty busy."
Sam: How was Tool?
M�rten: "That was great, no
doubt, opening for a band like that was definitely
a good thing."
Sean: With all of the high profile
tours that you guys have been doing, have there been
any acts that have really caught your eye?
M�rten: "It's kinda of hard to
say yet, I donno, we're kinda of a tough band still,
you know, the music is pretty fucked up I guess, so
it's not like we're gonna have this huge difference
all of a sudden, we're gonna blow up and have huge
sales or do fuckin' huge tours."
Sean: No, no I meant like, when
you've been on tour have you seen or heard any of
the local bands from around here that have caught
you ear?
M�rten: "Oh, oh ok. Actually, not
really, we haven't really listened alot...well we get
you know, alot of demos and stuff from people. I'm
sorry to say but maybe we'll listen to a bit of 5 out
of 10 of those because we gets tons of it. So, I haven't
really...I don't think we've really checked it out
that much. We've been listening to alot of other music
on the tour, mostly electronic music and some other
stuff, so as far as metal bands go, we don't really
know."
Sean: Since you guys do like
electronic music so much do you ever see that becoming
any part of Meshuggah?
M�rten: "No, not really. We go
through phases all of the time especially on tour
it gets even more, like everyone will start listening
to the same kind of thing because you're either up
here up front, or in the back all the time so you
kinda share in a different way and listen to similar
types of music. On this tour we've been listening
alot to like freaky bands like Geezum (sp?) from
Japan. The singer tries, you know, deliberately to
hurt the crowd, he hates the crowd. He goes out
with a chainsaw, he's like a G.G. Allin type
times 10. He's like trying to hurt people seriously."
There's alot of funny music out there no doubt. We've
been listening to the new Fantomas album, great album.
Sean: There are so many side
projects coming out of Sweden nowadays, has anyone
in Meshuggah been thinking about starting one?
M�rten: "No, not really. Fredrik
has done the occasional guitar leads for other albums
and for other bands, and he's done some music for a
Quake 3 clan, you know, like little stuff apart from
his solo album he did in like '96. But that's the
only major thing that anyone in the band has done
aside from the band. Also just this band seems to
take up most of the time that we have.
Sean: Why 8 string guitars?
M�rten: "Because they go lower,
and you still have the high notes left for like lead
guitars and for clean parts and stuff like that. You
could do it on a six string guitar if the measure was
long enough, but then you'd miss out for guitar leads
and the calmer parts, it would be hard to do it so,
hence the 8 string. And it's an additional low to the
7 string that we've used before so, playing in unison
with the bass on the same note sounds pretty cool."
Sean: Aren't your guitars custom
now?
M�rten: "Yeah"
Sean: I saw that on a website,
you had somebody, not like a name brand, but someone
who specifically made them.
M�rten: "Yeah, the guy that
makes the 8 sting guitars, that company is called
Nevborn. And the guys have endorsements with Ibanez
too, so they use Ibanez for all of the 7 string songs
and the Nevborn for the 8 string songs, so they keep
changing guitars in between songs and so on. Ibanez
is trying to build 8 string guitars for the guys too,
so we'll see how they'll end up, maybe it'll be all
Ibanez, we donno yet."
Sam: How do guys come up with
the time changes/signatures that you guys do?
M�rten: "Well, it's kind of
hard to say how we come up with it, it's just we've
been together for a long time now, like 15 years,
and just, this is basically what comes out. We start
writing...it's kinda hard to pin point exactly what
it is that makes us write these kind of beats."
Sean: What do you prefer in the
studio, digital or analog?
M�rten: "It's not really a
matter of preference, but to keep everything simple
when we record we basically have to do it digital.
It's a pain in the ass...you really need a good
engineer if you're gonna do it on...we do alot of
cuts, like in and out cutting. We never record whole
songs and keep one whole recording of one song. We
do parts, we record parts and sometimes it's half a
song, sometimes it's just one part that you do over
and over to nail it. Our records are very like, cut
up actually so, that's alot easier to do digitally.
You can do it analog too, but you need a really good
engineer to sit and cut that tape."
Sam: What are you guys doing
after this tour?
M�rten: "After this tour we go
back home, we do a few festivals in Europe and in
Sweden this summer. And we may or may not do a
European tour this coming fall depending on how
things look. Otherwise we're just gonna go back to
writing mode. And to avoid another one of those 3 1/2
year gaps we're gonna start writing again this
coming fall no matter what. And hopefully we'll
have the next album out within a year, a year and
a half from now."
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