It’s hard to believe, but Swedish five-piece Meshuggah have been releasing music for 25 years this year. And the band plan on celebrating a quarter century of technical progressive metal by not only releasing some music this year, but also doing some select live dates that will include some North American shows. The band’s Tomas Haake left an update on the band’s Facebook page titled “A Quarter Century of Deviance”
“You try to wrap your head around it but comprehension fails – it’s been twenty five years since the first official Meshuggah release!!! The selftitled (though often referred to as “Psykisk testbild“) EP came out on the small local Umeå label Garageland Records in 1989, making 2014 the big TWO FIVE for the band!! Hoooly s**t!!
Who would have thought huh!? – That our small group of young guys would get to – not only write and record our own quirky, deviant style of metal – but that we would still be doing it a quarter century later, making our living off of what we love to do!! Now in our forties we can’t but look back at it jawdropped and baffled at the fact!!
We always set out to do something new, something different from the music we heard around us – something that would be a challenge to ourselves to write, learn and perform. Something truly unique. Looking back at our career we feel that we have actually been successful in doing just that!!
We have for so many years been blessed with a super loyal fanbase and a still-growing one at that, allowing us to continue to create freely and without boundaries! For this we sincerely thank all of our fans that have stood by us all this time!!!
To commemorate this great anniversary we have a few different cool things coming out in 2014! Those will include among other things a few official releases, but as to not completely kill the suspense immediately, we will come back with more info on that during the winter and spring. So keep your eyes and ears peeled for more news on this in the next few months, on our official site as well as MySpace/F.B etc.
One thing we can announce at this time though is that we will be doing a few select “25th Anniversary” festival dates both European and in North America, out of which one will be us closing the Marquee stage at Graspop festival with a special 25th anniversary set on Sunday 29th of June! More info on additional dates will soon follow!
I’ll stop blathering now. Just want to say, from all of us in the band to all people whose support keeps us going strong still : THANK YOU!!! And here’s to another 25!!
/Tomas Haake – Meshuggah”
It’s uncertain what those releases will be, but it wouldn’t come as too much of a surprise if they were to reissue some of their back catalogue, or perhaps a live release, since the band has yet to release any live music. It’s only been a few years since Koloss was released, so it probably won’t be a new album. It’ll be interesting to see what North American festivals the band will play.
