MESHUGGAH Drummer Talks 'Koloss' In New Audio Interview

Andrew Haug of Australia's Soundwave Pirate Radio show recently conducted an interview with drummer Tomas Haake of Swedish experimental extreme metallers MESHUGGAH. You can now listen to the chat using the audio player below.

Interview (audio):

A one-minute video trailer for MESHUGGAH's new album, "Koloss", can be seen below. The effort will be released in Germany on March 23 and the rest of Europe on March 26 (March 27 in North America) as a CD digi, limited-edition Magic Cube (CD digi plus DVD exclusive to Nuclear Blast mail order) and two-LP brown vinyl via Nuclear Blast Records.

"Koloss" track listing:

01. I Am Colossus
02. The Demon's Name Is Surveillance
03. Do Not Look Down
04. Behind The Sun
05. The Hurt That Finds You First
06. Marrow
07. Break Those Bones Whose Sinews Gave It Motion
08. Swarm
09. Demiurge
10. The Last Vigil

Audio samples of all the tracks that are set to appear on "Koloss" can be streamed at Amazon.co.uk.

In a recent interview with MSN's metal music section Headbang, Haake stated about MESHUGGAH's decision to call the new album "Koloss", "It's not so much like a theme, it's kind of how the overall album is more towards something heavier than anything that we've ever done. We wanted something that had that sound to it, something monolithic, something huge. Also a few things that tied into that was the stress and anxiety that a few of us went through up until we started recording this album because of previous sessions where we felt we were doing things the wrong way. That lingers with you, you don't want to do the same mistakes again, you want to save the mental health of a few in the band as well, try to do things another way. So it felt like a colossal thing to get out of the hat this time, even though it went smoother in a lot of ways. Also once we knew what artwork we were using, because it's not artwork that was designed for this album, it was an existing piece of art by this Russian artist Luminokaya, we just fell in love with the piece and we found out it hadn't been used for anything, so we could buy the rights for it. Once we saw that, and we already had the title 'Colossus', we had that song in there, we just felt like this creature on the cover looks like, is it a god, is it a devil, what is it? The word 'Koloss' just fit for some reason."

On the topic of how the band found the album artwork, Haake said, "I don't even remember, I think I was just looking through random art online probably three or four years ago I saw this guy's art the first time. I got in contact with him, and initially he was supposed to do something for the album but we trailed off into other things and we didn't stay in touch for a while. I just took for granted that the piece had been used for something already, but when I finally asked him he said no, it was up for grabs. He's done a lot of additions and renditions and versions of it for the whole layout, so he's spent a lot of time on it too, and we're really stoked that we ended up using this art."

Regarding the suggestion that "Koloss" sounds like MESHUGGAH deliberately tried to expand its sound even more than on "ObZen", Haake said, "We definitely pushed ourselves hard with 'ObZen', too, but maybe that one feels even more like a flirtatious thing with the stuff we were doing earlier on and the stuff we grew up with. I still feel there's some of that on this one too, with the different tunings, and a couple of the songs are actually written for six-string guitar and not all of them being really down-tuned eight-stringed stuff. That's definitely to get that old-school thrash vibe in there, even though the music is different, of course. There's definitely a little bit of that going on this album, too. But apart from that, we basically tried to create something that we find intriguing. We always try to find new ways of writing our own music, so to speak, to see if there's an additional lateral movement, a sideways step that we can take for ourselves to feel that we did something new with this one and that we pushed ourselves into doing something that came out cool and refreshing. That's kind of what we always aim for, and this time it came out like this."

Released in March 2008, MESHUGGAH's last album, "obZen", debuted at No. 59 on The Billboard 200 chart and at No. 14 on the iTunes Top Rock Albums chart.

MESHUGGAH's first DVD, "Alive" sold around 3,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to debut at position No. 8 on the Top Music Videos chart.

"Break Those Bones Whose Sinews Gave It Motion" lyric video: