SW: I listen to a lot of underground metal and it took me 4 or 5 listens before I began to catch on. But, eventually I liked it.
MH: Great man.

SW: It was hard to get into it at first.
MH: Oh yeah! I understand that totally. But that's a little bit of the point. We don't want to make it our image that, that's what we're trying to do. We ourselves are not aware of how exactly inaccessible we are 'cause when you're in the band and you wrote the songs, and you know the thoughts and ideas behind it, it doesn't sound that strange. But sometimes people come up and say, "Hey man, I can't figure your shit out. It's hard to get into." And stuff like that. And I understand where that's coming from. But the point is, the albums I respect the most myself, when I'm sitting at home listening, are the albums that grew on me. I still listen to those to this day. If I had an album when I was 14 and I love it straight away and I listened to it today...it might be a nostalgic trip but I don't think it's good by today's standards.

SW: You guys are about to finish up the Ozzfest, and you have an upcoming tour with Tool...
MH: Yeah. We're in Phoenix today and tomorrow. And then we have two more shows with Ozzfest, then we fly home on Monday. We go home for three weeks and then we are back here on October 2nd and the tour starts with Tool.

SW: So far, how has the response been for your music on Ozzfest?
MH: Well, the thing is, we don't play the new stuff [laughs]. 'Cause we don't have the eight-strings yet. We have a 25-minute slot. That makes it very easy to play a bunch of the old songs. We play like five songs and we're off. So on Ozzfest, that's not much of a drawback. The Tool tour, that's actually going to show how the new material carries over live. But I think it will. I would say that on the Tool tour...I think the new stuff might be actually more accessible to the Tool crowd than perhaps "Chaosphere" 'cause that's a faster album. You know? It's harder to pick-up live. I don't think we're gong to get that many Meshuggah fans on the Tool show. It's going to be one of those things where it sells out in two seconds and everybody's going to be there to see Tool. The set we did when we opened for Tool last time around was excellent. We expected to get a hard time from the crowd but we didn't so it was all right.

Click Here For MESHUGGAH Interview with Marten Hagstrom Page 6