Meshuggah

Dedicated to pushing the boundaries of extreme tech-metal, Meshuggah formed in the college town of Umeå in northern Sweden in 1987, taking their name from the Yiddish word for crazy. They’ve spent more than three decades developing, exploring and redefining their approach to music.

Meshuggah released their debut album Contradictions Collapse in 1991. Featuring heavy riffs, it offered a nod to Metallica’s early sound while foreshadowing a preoccupation with themes of chaos, paradox and negation.

The band broke through in 1995 with the arrival of their multi-dimensional Destroy Erase Improve produced by a then 21-year-old Daniel Bergstrand (In Flames, Behemoth) at Soundfront Studios. Released to critical acclaim, it has been lauded as one of heavy metal’s most masterfully evolutionary albums.

After pushing the limits of heaviness with 1998’s Chaosphere, there was only one place left for Meshuggah to go on their fourth album – and so 2002’s Nothing was even heavier.

The group’s studio music offering for 2005 was Catch Thirtythree, a 47-minute-long “uni-song” divided into 13 “suites”. More of an experimental piece than a bona-fide album, it took listeners on a journey through a warped metaphoric dream state.

In 2008, Meshuggah’s sixth record obZen debuted at No.59 in the US on the Billboard top 200 chart. Four years later Koloss came out featuring their signature eight-string guitar work on hypnotic tracks like The Hurt That Finds Your First and Break Those Bones Whose Sinews Gave It Motion.

Another four-year break followed before Meshuggah unveiled The Violent Sleep Of Reason in 2016. The band have spent subsequent years working on its successor, and in late 2020 announced UK tour dates for December 2021 along with a special show at London’s Royal Albert Hall on 3 June 2022.