In July, the world received much-needed good news: progressive extreme metal crew Meshuggah were finally working on a follow-up to 2016’s massive The Violent Sleep of Reason. Now, in a new interview, drummer Tomas Haake has revealed that the majority of the material for that new album is ready to go.
Chatting with Knotfest.com’s Mosh Talks with the Beez, Tomas described how far along the band were on their new album, and what it takes to get down Mesuggah’s unique sound.
“I think we have most of the material for the new album,” said Tomas. “It takes a long time for us between each album, and this time, due to COVID as well, it’s gonna be longer than usual, I think. Right now, we’re aiming at a release in late ’21.
“Then the question mark right now is, is touring even gonna happen at that point? And if not, do you release the album or do you hold off with it and try to make money some other ways, like doing live shows on the Internet or whatever?
“So, yeah, it’s time consuming, for sure. We tend to scrutinize everything we do a lot, too…I think, to some degree, you just turn kind of insane over time when you try to do this thing, because we always try to challenge ourselves and we always try to find something that [we] haven’t done before. But we’ve done this for 30 years now, so it’s harder and harder to find what’s special with this — like, This riff, is it cool enough? Or what’s going on? So you tend to kind of overly scrutinize things.
Tomas later went on to discuss the sometimes frustrating limitations of being a band from which fans wanted a specific form of music.
“Of course, we have a certain framework that we still wanna sound like Meshuggah. We wanna have that signature sound…in the best-case scenario, it’s, like, Oh, that’s gotta be Meshuggah, even if it’s a brand new thing. So hopefully that’s something we’re aiming at.
“But with that said, as far as the music goes, we try kind of the opposite of what AC/DC has been doing for 40 years. So we’re not trying to write the same album over and over. And whether we succeed with that or not, that’s more up to our fans and other people, but that’s definitely the aim. We try our best to kind of find new grips within the framework of what we’re supposed to be, I guess.”
Listen to the full interview here:
More on Meshuggah’s new album as it comes.
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Words by Chris Krovatin
