The Swedish music scene has produced many famous metal bands who have made significant contributions. Among them is the Meshuggah team. It is amazing that it is in this small country that heavy music has gained such huge popularity.
The most notable was the death metal movement that began in the late 1980s. The Swedish school of death metal has become one of the brightest in the world, second in popularity only to the American one. But there was another genre of extreme music, which was popularized by the Swedes.
We are talking about such a peculiar and complex direction as math metal, the founders of which are Meshuggah. We bring to your attention the biography of the group, whose popularity has only increased over the years.
Formation of Meshuggah and first albums
One of the founders and constant leader of Mehsuggah is guitarist Fredrik Thordendal. The idea to create their own musical group arose back in 1985.
Then it was a student team of like-minded people who did not pretend to be something serious. After recording the first demo, the band disbanded.
Despite the setback, Thordendal continued his creative pursuits with other musicians. Within two years, the guitarist improved his skills, which led to an acquaintance with vocalist Jens Kidman.
It was he who came up with the unusual name Meshuggah. With Thordendal, bassist Peter Norden and drummer Niklas Lundgren, he began an active creative activity, which led to the appearance of the first mini-album.
The first release of Psykisk Testbild was published with a circulation of 1 copies. The group was noticed by the major label Nuclear Blast. He allowed Meshuggah to start recording their first full-length album.
The debut album Contradictions Collapse was released in 1991. In terms of its genre component, it was classic thrash metal. At the same time, the music of the Meshuggah group was already distinguished by a progressive sound, devoid of straightforward primitivism.
The group gained a significant "fan" base, which allowed them to go on their first full-fledged tour. But the band's release was not a commercial success. The band released their next album in 1995.
The record Destroy Erase Improve became more complex and progressive than the debut. Groove metal elements were heard in the music, which made the sound more heavy. Thrash metal, which had lost its former relevance, gradually disappeared.
Progressive sound and polyrhythm
It was in the second album that math metal music began to appear. A distinctive feature of the genre has become an intricate structure that requires incredible training and experience of musicians.
In parallel with this, Fredrik Thordendal began a solo career, which did not prevent him from participating in the Meshuggah group. And already in the Chaosphere album, the musicians reached the perfection to which the last few years have been going.
The album was notable for the originality of guitar riffs with polyrhythm and complex solo parts. The band retained the former heaviness of groove metal, which made difficult-to-perceive music more understandable.
The band embarked on a musical tour with stars such as Slayer, Entombed and Tool, gaining even more popularity.
The commercial success of Meshuggah
A new chapter in the work of Meshuggah was the musical album Nothing, which was released in 2002.
Despite the fact that the album was posted on the Internet a month before the official release, this did not affect the commercial success. The album "burst" into the Billboard 200, taking the 165th position there.
The album turned out to be slower and heavier than previous collections. It did not have the high-speed guitar parts characteristic of the previous work of Meshuggah.
Another important feature was the use of both seven-string and eight-string guitars. The last option was later used by the Meshuggah guitarists on an ongoing basis.
In 2005, the album Catch Thirtythree, unusual in its structure, was released, in which each subsequent track was a logical continuation of the previous one. Despite this, the track Shed became the soundtrack to the third part of the Saw franchise.
Another distinctive feature of the album is the use of software percussion instruments used by the musicians for the first time.
March 7, 2008 the band released a new album obZen. She became the best in the work of the group. The main hit of the album was the song Bleed, which is widely known in popular culture.
Despite the fact that the group has existed for more than 20 years, the popularity continued to increase. The band's music could be found not only in movies, but also in TV shows. In particular, fragments of songs were used in one of the episodes of the animated series The Simpsons.
Meshuggah band now
Meshuggah is one of the most influential bands in the history of heavy music today. Many publications include musicians in the list of innovators who have changed the image of progressive metal.
Despite a long career, the musicians continue to delight with new experiments, releasing music albums that are complex in their structure. Veterans continue to be in the rank of leaders, easily withstanding competition in the mat-metal scene.
The influence of Meshuggah is almost impossible to overestimate. It was these musicians who first began to use polyrhythm on an ongoing basis.
The intricacy of the structure led to the creation of a new genre, which led to new directions in heavy music. And one of the most successful of them was Djent, which appeared in the second half of the 2000s.
Young musicians, taking the concept of Meshuggah's music as a basis, brought elements of such popular genres as metalcore, deathcore and progressive rock into it.
Some bands combine metal and electronic music, adding ambient elements to it. But without Meshuggah, these experiments within the Djent movement would not have been possible.
