Ah, modern metal. A time where you can record your guitar solos at 80% speed, record difficult passages over the course of 20 takes, and quantize everything to the grid until it's so perfect it doesn't even sound human. Fortunately, you'll be hearing absolutely none of that nonsense on the new Meshuggah album.
The band says it recorded The Violent Sleep Of Reason all live in the studio, making this the first time Meshuggah has attempted to accomplish that feat in "20 to 25 years. Drummer Tomas Haake explains why the band made that decision in an interview with Metal Hammer.
"If you put it all together using computers, then you often have to fix problems after the fact. I've gone back to records where I've not known every drum part. And once you do that, you can start with drums and then just add layers of guitars and then bass and it all sounds perfect.
Obzen and Koloss are great albums, but, to me, they are a little too perfect. It didn't really capture what we sounded like honestly. But where we recorded live, you get to hear the push and pull, one person might be a little ahead and the other might be a little behind. If you kill that, you can kill the energy."
So for us it was just about going back to those albums that inspired us when we were growing up, that were important to us in our formative years, and all of those bands had that energy. The albums in the '80s and early '90s had the rawness that I'm talking about — that's what we wanted to recapture."
If there's ever been, or ever will be, a band that can pull off insane technicality live with such ease that it all sounds like it has a laid-back groove to it, it's Meshuggah. The band has proved that through its countless live shows over the years, as well as its live albums Alive and The Ophidian Trek. Basically, there's no way I could be more excited to hear this record than I am right now!
To get even more excited, Nuclear Blast released this "trailer" with drummer Tomas Haake talking about the artwork, and you can definitely hear bits of new songs in the background.
[youtube]https://youtu.be/N6IZ3LZuphs[/youtube]
You can pre-order The Violent Sounds Of Meshuggah Live In The Studio here before its release date of October 7.
