By Martin Popoff
Sweden's biggest buzz(saw) band Meshuggah are currently running around the country knocking the stuffing out of nu-metal Ozzfest-goers with their heart-stopping brand of progressive death. But you won't be hearing tracks from the band's new Billboard-charting (!) album Nothing on the tour. That would require eight-string guitars, machines that are still in production back home.
"Yes, unfortunately not," offers guitarist Marten Hagstrom. "We're doing Ozzfest with an old set, with our seven-string guitars. We have 30 minutes here on Ozzfest, so we put together the songs we thought would be most suitable, without adding something from the new album, because of two things: the album was just released last week, as you probably know, and it felt like there wasn't any need to play a song before the release of the album. And the guy who is building the eight-strings, couldn't finish them in time so we won't have them until we go back to Sweden on the 10th or 11th of September. So we haven't been able to do that. But I promise you that next time we come around, we're going to do the new stuff."
Marten fondly recounts the friendships made on Ozzfest. "Definitely, Ozzfest is like a camp, like a tent city. Everybody is just walking around with a beer, saying hi to everybody, shooting the shit. So we're having a lot of fun. We talk lots to Hatebreed, a lot of the Down guys. We hang with Otep, Pulse Ultra, Flaw, what have you. All of the bands are totally super cool. We've done some off-dates with System Of A Down, so we've had some time with them. We're also doing off-dates with Mushroomhead."
MESHUGGAH - Nothing Doing! Page 2