Tomas Haake, drummer of Meshuggah, has opened up about his physical health issues. While talking with Rolling Stone, the 50-year-old technical drumming master revealed that he has been suffering from eczema on his hands.
Haake told Rolling Stone,
“I have this eczema inside my hands. I’ve got to tape up all my fingers and put on gloves just to mess around on the kit, even. That means I haven’t really touched the drums since we recorded the album, and that was, like, early April. So I’m almost a year out, without even hitting a drum.”
Haake shared that finding an effective treatment has proven difficult,
“I’ve been to so many specialists and dermatologists about this at this point and they’re all like, ‘Huh?’ They say it looks like contact eczema, but we’ve ruled that out because I’ve done all the tests that you can do, as far as anything that I might come in contact with. It goes up and down, but it’s a bummer, for sure, whether you’re a drummer or not. I mean, we all need our hands to function for daily life.”
This year, although some of the band’s tour dates had to be postponed, Haake remains committed to working through the discomfort, stating,
“These hands are bumming me out, man. I try to stay positive about things like this and not allow myself to just get all depressed over it. It is what it is. We’ll see if some new doctor has something important to tell me that helps me clear this up. But, yeah, I mean, if not, I will still have to play.”
