After witnessing a mind-blowing opening set of Meshuggah madness, I crept backstage (with Stevie Ramone on camera) to interview their dynamic lead singer Jens Kidman. Throughout the interview Marten Hagstrøm (the second guitarist in Meshuggah) was kind enough to pop in and answer a few questions. Overall, I think Meshuggah was enjoying their first US tour (even though they are just a few shows into the tour) and were looking forward to their first day off in Atlanta. I hope they really enjoy the tour so they'll come back to America again.

If you've never seen Meshuggah then this is a tour that you need to catch. These guys are on the top of the Metal heap and are daily getting the kind of recognition that will deservedly skyrocket them to the upper echelons of music. They are touring to support their masterpiece, Chaosphere, which follows their other masterpiece, Destroy Erase Improve. I hope this is just the beginning of a long line of juggernaut recordings to come from these Swedish Metallers.

How long is the tour you're doing with Slayer?

You certainly are a dynamic opening band...your show was just incredible. Your vocal performance was outstanding. I don't know how your voice holds up. Do you do anything special to prepare yourself?

Jens: I try to warm up a bit before the shows. I work with my voice a lot. Tonight was not that good--just okay. [considering I thought the show was great. I'd like to see him on the top of his game. --swade] When you are on tour you're performing every night--so you don't rehearse a lot, you get out of the habit. You may not play for a couple of days, it makes it harder (to perform at a high level).

In Sweden, do you play often? Are you playing for larger crowds than you are on this tour? Are you usually headlining?

Really?

Jens: We did a tour with Entombed in November of last year. We played larger clubs with them. We toured with Machine Head in Europe.

You played the Milwaukee Metalfest last July--did you enjoy that?

Jens: Oh yeah, that was fun.

Played with a lot of big bands at Milwaukee?

Jens: Oh yeah, we didn't even know what the Milwaukee Metalfest was when we came over here. We hadn't even released Chaosphere, so why should we go to the States and play a few shows when we have no record to sell? It seemed stupid, but we did it and we don't regret it.

I understand most of the lyrics are written by Tomas Haake, why don't you write your own lyrics?

Jens: Because he does them much better.

Jens: Oh yeah, much better than me. He is amazing.

His drumming is amazing as well. His work on Chaosphere really appears to be light years ahead of Destroy Erase Improve.

Jens: Oh yeah, we tried to develop our sound further.

So that you're not resting on Thordendal's guitar?

Jens: Actually, we wanted Chaosphere to be totally different from Destroy Erase Improve. Destroy Erase Improve was written over a couple of years, Chaosphere was written in three, four, five months. It's intense. Every day, morning to night, writing songs. You have to know what to do with a hard record. There's no crap melodies on Chaosphere. The whole record is a reflection of how everything was made. Everything was new. We hadn't even played any of the songs all the way through before we went into the studio. Except one song, "Sane," that was the only song we played.

Do you feel that the accidents that occured to this band in 1994 with Thordendal's finger and Haake's hand influenced Destroy Erase Improve? Did it come out of all the tragedy?

Jens: No, it wasn't. Those accidents and the other things--people get hurt. Fred is a carpenter and hurt his finger on the job. Then later when we were supposed to start rehearsals Tomas put his finger in a cutter.

Jens: Yeah. All this shit happened.

They've both recovered well.

Jens: Yeah, we had blood in the rehearsal studio. So all the instruments were like wrecked. Oh yeah, shit happpens. It's rough when that happens.

Then you lost your bassist Peter Nordin?

Jens: Actually we lost him on the European tour in 1995. For the last few shows, Fred would play the bass too. He played the guitar, then play a solo on the bass. It was fun.

He's very talented.

Jens: Yeah.

Other than Frederick Thordendal's Special Defects, do any other band members have side projects or do you think it would dilute the quality of Meshuggah's material?

Jens: No, no one has other side projects. I don't know. I just think that Frederick had ideas over the past couple of years that he wanted to do. We were just away from the band for a whole year. We went through a couple of years where we were all apart. We just all moved to Stockholm from a small city north of Stockholm (Umea) in Sweden. Ten months after we all moved from Stockholm we started recording the Chaosphere. We lost a bass player, Fred was doing a solo album and we moved to Stockholm. It accounts for the big gap between Destroy Erase Improve and Chaosphere.

It threw you behind schedule a little bit when recording Chaosphere.

Jens: I came to Stockholm about ten months after everyone then we started rehearsals.

How do you feel about the Rolling Stone article where they named you one of the ten best metal bands?

Jens: I've heard about it, but I've never seen it.

They only gave you a hardness factor of 7. They said Pantera was harder than you.

Jens: Uh, I don't know about that. That's their opinion.

I think Rolling Stone is full of shit.

Jens: Yeah, I think so too.

Describe your style of music? Do you think you have become more industrial metal over the years?

Jens: Like all other bands, nobody wants to be put in boxes. We don't try to make a certain kind of music. We try to make aggressive, quality music. An aggressive form of music. You know, not jumping around...blah, blah, blah [growling noises]...we don't want to do that. We've progressed a lot since Contradictions Collapse in 1991 and we don't want to do the same album over. Back then it was the crazier the better. We don't want that now. We try to have other riffs that have more meaning now. Back then we had like three minutes with fucked up riffs for no reason.

You've grown a lot since then.

Jens: Aah, I hope so.

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