25 Years of Meshuggah!

Sweden’s extreme metallers Meshuggah are now celebrating their 25-year anniversary. Meshuggah announce the upcoming re-issue of 2004’s one song EP, I, via Nuclear Blast on 29th September. Album artwork & concept are courtesy of Meshuggah drummer Tomas Haake, who comments on the EP’s mutant resurrection:

 “This 21 minute madness that is the song “I” is something we’ve always been extremely proud of!! Originally recorded for Jason Popson/Fractured transmitter record label, this was a “one off” that NB gave us the go ahead for – as we were under contract with them. Our plan was to just quickly write a little nugget of a song to help our friend Jason to kickstart his label. It wasn’t quick however. We ended up spending a couple months on this thing as it just kept evolving and kind of took on a life of its own. This song is really different as it wasn’t “written” in the normal sense, but recorded without anything more than very open guidelines/ideas as to what kind of style we wanted each part to have. For examples, the initial 1½ minute drumfill is an excerpt of around a 15 minute recording of me just randomly going off on a kick/tom fill. Once we had chosen which part of it to use, we had to chart out the hits on paper and guitarist Fredrik and Marten then basically used sight-reading/avista to get the hits right while recording. And this is how we continued through the whole song/process.

We often get the question “When will you guys play I?” – And though I’m sure it could be done with a lot of listening and hard work – It’s really too unstructured a track. It would take up too much time and effort to make sense.

We’re super stoked now, to have this be re-released under the NB flag. Distribution and access to this little demon of a song was never quite what we had wished back when this was released, so we’re thrilled to see it be brought back to life!!

To further add value to this re-release, we added a couple live tracks and another weird little track “Pitch black” that some of our fans may have heard but probably not all, as it was only released in a limited number.

Enjoy!” Tomas Haake – Meshuggah

I’s 21-minute title track has been re-mastered and includes two live tracks recorded during the 2012 – 2013 Ophidian Trek World Tour, plus a previously unreleased studio track recorded in July 2003 at Meshuggah’s own Fear & Loathing studio in Stockholm, Sweden.

The track listing for ‘I‘ is:

Meshuggah’s upcoming live DVD / Blu-ray + 2-CD release The Ophidian Trek is also due out in the UK on the 29th September.

With visual footage shot in the U.S. & Europe during The Ophidian Trek tour and festival footage from Wacken Open Air 2013 in Germany, the live audio was processed & edited by Meshuggah guitarist Fredrik Thordendal, mixed by Daniel Begstrand (MESHUGGAH, DIMMU BORGIR, BEHEMOTH), and mastered by Mats “Limpan” Lindfors (ROXETTE, OPETH, KATATONIA).

Drummer Tomas Haake shares the following about the upcoming DVD:

“We’re really stoked about this new Meshuggah live dvd! It’s been 4 years since the release of “Alive” and with the band celebrating 25 years, we felt that we just had to get another one of these puppies out there! Audio/Video was recorded during our European stretch of “ The ophidian trek” tour, as well as at the Wacken open air festival – and we’re super proud of how it came out! For this one we used the extremely talented photographer Anthony Dubois for filming and editing etc and he’s really done a stunning job with it! Hope you guys dig it and here’s to another 25!!” – Tomas

‘The Ophidian Trek’s track listings below:

Live DVD: