Meshuggah

By Carl Begai

Québec is known for offering up top tier metal talent to the world and having a forward thinking European-bent metal fanbase. Montréal’s Hasta La Muerte is one of the province’s latest spawn, having stomped into the spotlight earlier this year with a tongue-in-cheek / bum drum rap metal debut single, ‘Pour Anotha Shot’. The song, and particularly the video, garnered them instant attention both positive and “WTF?!” negative. A few months later they followed up with a darker, meaner, uglier tune ‘Step Up’, which has at the very least cemented them as not being flash in the pan. Beyond the music, however, almost nothing has been published about their roots and plans for world domination. Having tagged them as “Van Halen getting Ugly Kid Stuck Mojo-ed” when ‘Pour Anotha Shot’ first surfaced, I decided to dig up any available dirt for Hasta La Muerte’s growing fanbase.

“The band started out with myself, Manuel (Iradian / guitars) and Kev (Alexander / drums),” says guitarist David Evangelista, “all being friends in different bands and wanting to make something different together as a new band. Even though we grew up on old school heavy metal, we listen to all kinds of music, including hip-hop, rock, blues, or whatever in our free time. When we decided to work together, we worked off some demos that I had that were sort-of groovy and hip-hop-sounding, electronic, but also metal and really low-tuned on guitar. These were basic riffs and templates that would turn into ‘Pour Anotha Shot’ and ‘Step Up’. We wanted to be open to other genres of music as influences. So we collaborated to finish these ideas and making them into full instrumental songs, the three of us.”

“We put up a demo to recruit a vocalist, and we welcomed Robby (J. Fonts) who was primarily a rapper at the time. He did a great job mixing rap and heavy vocals on the demo which would eventually turn into our first single, ‘Pour Anotha Shot’. He had a similar open-minded vision too, so it worked out really well with the other material as well. But originally, before he appeared, it wasn’t necessarily set out to be rap-metal, it just sort of happened that way and we didn’t question it.” Continue reading HASTA LA MUERTE – Take Your Best Shot

By Carl Begai

Hitting the 25 year mark of anything is a big deal. Birthday, marriage, time spent in prison, it’s a milestone to be celebrated (okay, two out of three ain’t bad…). Of course, like anything Swedish bashers Meshuggah do, even an occasion supposedly as simple as an anniversary comes with a certain amount of head-scratching. Do the math and you find that folks are about two years too late, as Meshuggah was formed in 1987. If you take the band’s first official release, Contradictions Collapse, in 1991 as the jump-off point you’re late to the party. Turns out the band is using their painfully limited edition three-song Meshuggah EP from ’89 – otherwise known as Psykisk Testbild – as their first official sign of life to be celebrated. And even then, according to guitarist Mårten Hagström, it isn’t your predictable music industry tip of the hat to a momentous occasion.

“There’s the Ophidian Trek DVD, the 25th Anniversary touring that we’re doing in December in Europe, the re-release of the I EP, so for me it’s all been mashed together and has become a bit confusing,” admits Hagström. “The DVD is basically just a representation of what we did on the Koloss tour; it doesn’t really celebrate 25 years of the band. We started out recording every show on the tour as far as audio went because the gear was alll hooked up anyway, and I think it was Fredrik (Thordendal/guitars) who came up with the idea for the DVD. We had a new stage set, we took great care to implement the light design and create an actual show, so doing a DVD made sense at least for our sake. And as always with this band, things got out of hand (laughs). If we were going to do it we decided we might as well do it properly, and when Nuclear Blast heard that they decided we should release it. So all we’ve been doing for the last six months is looking after the re-release of I, rehearsing for the tour and preparing the DVD.”

“The first release from Meshuggah that we commemorate 25 years isn’t a Nuclear Blast release, it’s Psykisk Testbild, and that was only 500 copies or something. That was the real start of the band, but I guess we worked differently than other bands because before we did Destroy Erase Improve (1995) we weren’t on any map. We didn’t tour before 1995, so the whole 25th Anniversary depends on where you count from (laughs).” Continue reading BraveWords Interview: MESHUGGAH – Create Unleash Dominate