Happy Metal from Meshuggah guitarist

The excellently-named Meshuggah is a "technical death metal" band from Sweden. While I appreciate their musical experimentation, the singer's angry growl is a bit much for me. I was delighted when my pal Patrick Kelly pointed me to this great video of Meshuggah's guitarist Fredrik Thordendal shredding with great joy along with Morgan Ågren, the drummer in Thordendahl's side project Special Defects. Those grins are infectious. As Pat says, this here is Happy Metal!

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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Maddy

Did I miss the singing, some how? Didn’t notice any singing at all on this video. The “angry growl” is pretty much de rigueur of contemporary metal, sorta the way Eddie Veddar’s 90s phrasing became the quick way to articulate alternative …
- Shinydan
  
  The aforementioned growling can be heard here, on Meshuggah’s “New Millennium Cyanide Christ”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A_tSyJBsRQ&feature=relmfu .
http://twitter.com/cicadamania Cicada Mania

Toki Wartooth!
- http://twitter.com/incarnedine_v Dan Hibiki
  
  No, Toki is Mikael Åkerfeldt.
  - koopapoopas
    
    Hahaha. Just got into Opeth. The cat song might fit into Heritage?
    
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD0qyXMjb1s
Shinydan

While I agree this is awesome, isn’t “technical” just a euphemism for “prog”?
- http://modernwhaling.com Greg
  
  Technical just means the music requires a good deal of instrumental proficiency, while progressive means it also experiments with different structures, sounds, etc.
  
  So a band could be technical without really being progressive (i.e. Arsis), and vice versa (i.e. Sigur Ros).
Andrew Menke

Why is there a piece of duck tape on the upper strings of his guitar?
- Joshua Mathai
  
  It’s used to mute those strings.
  - Gaelen Marsden
    
    Is that what one is meant to do with an 8-string guitar? Mute 3 of them?
    - Andrew Menke
      
      but this one goes to eight strings…
    - Owen Davis
      
      Yep, pretty much. But it’s just a technique used when you are recording, to prevent any stray string noise. He’s only playing the rhythm guitar parts here, so he’s not going to use those strings.
- http://modernwhaling.com Greg
  
  Probably to act as a mute.
- bingobangoboy
  
  He wanted a bit more quack.
http://modernwhaling.com Greg

For metal that actually sounds happy, please investigate Fang Island:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6n09kkdBFI
http://twitter.com/stuartastbury Stuart Astbury

For more hot Morgan Agren action, try this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rts6DfRd_A
- Martijn
  
  Bits of it are okay, but most of it can be improved by removing some of the instruments that aren’t drums.
Val Lindsay

Is this happy? Hmmm, maybe not. But similar to your post, it’s an instrumental of the song and the flying fingers and ascertaining the notes played make me very happy. Thanks for the video, btw. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOb6JSQd-Qw
David Pescovitz

“Happy” is a reference to the grins on their faces as they play.
- Val Lindsay
  
  Heh. Sorry, I was referring to the video I posted being ‘not happy’…
autark

Meshuggah is not just a Swedish death metal band… they are *THE* Swedish death metal band. Definitive.

Also responsible for coining their own genre: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Djent

Worth noting: there are a slough of Yiddish words related to Meshuggah that mean “crazy”, which is an apt description of their music.
splashu

If you like that you should enjoy the cartoony metal stylings of Mattias ‘IA’ Eklundh:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iTWUyPq-3E
Martijn

I think this would sound a lot better without the guitar. That drummer is amazing!
Owen Davis

I think the singer (Jens Kidman) is fantastic, but if you don’t like his singing, try this Lady Gaga + Meshuggah mashup:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UU63P50ag0c
Dan Groom

For a different take on Meshuggah vocals – this guy doing ‘Bleed’ acapella is awesometastic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rq2gK9zJ81Y
http://twitter.com/timothydog76 Tim Stevenson

Big fan of Meshuggah here. I am the admin over at the Meshuggah Forum http://www.tandjent.com/meshforum . This video is many years old (a classic) and it is from a Swedish TV show called Trum where Morgan Agren would show drumming technique and would have a special guest to play each time. Fredrik and Morgan are playing a medly from Fred’s 1997 solo project Fredrik Thordendal’s Special Defects – Sol Niger Within. If you aren’t a fan of Meshuggah vocals you certainly won’t like the vocals on this but it is still monumentally awesome.

Morgan is a world class drummer and you should definitely check out his work with Mats/Morgan.

Cheers!
Shane Simmons

The, uh, commentary on this video cracks me up. Martin Lopez, formerly of Opeth: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJt_4Gafq6g
Donald Petersen

The happy grins remind me of every garage jam I’ve ever been in, when the music is going great and there isn’t an audience to impress. Man, that’s fun. I even heartily approve of the muted upper strings (I could swear that’s a seven-string, not an eight-string guitar) since I’m rather a devotee of chunky metal rhythm playing, but I’m too square for math metal. I was just crying for a straightforward 4/4 backbeat.
Cowicide

Ah man, I was hoping it was going to be something like this from the Melvins:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxFFggnHPM4
Fletcher Harrington

it’s a 7 string guitar if i’m not mistaken, and the reason he has a guitar with extra strings and yet mutes 3 of those, is because the remaining strings are lower in pitch than typical 6 string guages. It suits his metal playing. For those of you who think this would sound better without the guitar.. you must have missed the synergy – aka the reason for this post.
http://twitter.com/ee1o federico

i’m very much enjoying the recent influx of metal related posts on the blog. happy to realize there are many other metalhead boingers.
http://twitter.com/slowtiger slowtiger

Could get interesting if he teams up with Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew.
http://www.facebook.com/daniel.z.klein Daniel Zenon Klein

It’s in my top ten of favorite albums. (There’s only the one album for now; BoingBoing are about 15 years late to the party there, but the video I guess is only 10 years old, so that’s okay). Do you see that piece of duct tape on his guitar? That’s so the three higher strings (on the, uhm, 8 string? Not sure if he was using the 8 string back then already or if this is the somewhat less outlandish 7 string) don’t accidentally pick up any vibration and make the guitar sound less bass-heavy. That video is not the album version of the song: it’s sort of a medley of some of the songs from the album, and it’s a little bit improvisation as well, which is insane.

You should totally check out the lyrics. Here’s “Death at both Ends”:

parallel dimensions: on frequencies sublime.
hidden for millenia to earthbound mind.
girded with lies.reality until now.
delusional abbreviation.
unearthly codes deciphered at last.
an eternal presence. a moment without a past.
reality transfigured. still the same.
in deafening silence. all things flow.
a pulsating vessel.
presence: rising. falling. in and out.
the eschaton is calling from the end of time.

That last line? Pretty good. These lyrics are the apotheosis of pretentious metal word-smithing, and yet they go beyond being a parody, beyond thesaurus-penis-pride and do their own thing. They’re the only thing that makes sense with this music.

This is the full album:  http://grooveshark.com/#!/album/Sol+Niger+Within/4745840

Here are the lyrics:  http://www.darklyrics.com/lyrics/fredrikthordendalsspecialdefects/solnigerwithinversion333.html New album coming this year!

As for happy metal, this is happy metal:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWiVl8QChSM
- http://twitter.com/timothydog76 Tim Stevenson
  
  It’s an Ibanez 7620 7-string. Meshuggah were not using 8 strings back then. They didn’t start using them until after Nothing. Nothing was recorded using 7 strings tuned as the top strings of an 8 string guitar.
lumpygravy2

Not impressed. Doodling is doodling, no matter they ‘style.’ Too dam lazy to actually write and arrange a real track.
- slappy
  
  please post a video of you being more impressive. I can’t wait to see it!
lumpygravy2

Vanity is buying a guitar with more than 6 strings and then muting the extra strings.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Theremin-Nipplecat/100002760057587 Theremin Nipplecat

That’s some of the best jazz I have ever heard.
Mat Linnett

Personally, I like this take on Slayer’s “Angel of Death”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHo6I_AFCzo
http://twitter.com/behold666 Behold666

Meshuggah has never been a “technical death metal” band.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eqk4Xdp2O5o
Jonas Eliasson

As a Swede, I would just like to point out that the clip is from a show on UR = utbildningsradion = the Swedish Educational Broadcasting Company: “a public-service corporation dedicated to serving the needs of the Swedish general public by providing educational programming on radio and television”.

That’s my tax dollars at work!