Comedian Bill Burr is one of the most popular comedians out there right now. He’s also got a pretty successful podcast. And this should come as no surprise to Metal Insider readers, but he likes metal. He’s spoken on his podcast in the past about instrumental stoner rockers Earthless, and yesterday, he went on and on about Meshuggah, who he recently caught with former The Mars Volta drummer Dave Elitch, who gives him drum lessons. Of course Tomas Haake is a machine,
“I went with Dave [Elitch, ex-The Mars Volta, etc.]—my drum teacher—I went to Meshuggah, who I’d never seen live. I gotta tell ya it was a fucking life-altering experience. I can’t remember the last time I saw a fucking band that blew my mind like that.
They are a heavy metal band—not a heavy metal—a metal band, from Sweden; who I’ve always heard of and I always tried to get into it, but the combination of the singer that ‘rawr rawr rawr rawr’-singing like that… I’m already an angry enough guy. I’m like Jesus Christ am I really going to have this on my fucking hard drive?
And then like the music was so complex, I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t like so many of the songs, like the drummer’s basically playing like a polyrhythm. It’s like his body’s playing two different songs. I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about.
But as far as I can tell, it seemed like on top he’d be playing in like 4. And then his feet, I don’t know what, they’re playing like a completely different song. And then the band is playing the rhythm to his feet but the crowd is nodding to what the fuck he’s doing with his hands.
So everybody’s grooving with this shit. It’s like I dunno, do you want to check out a fucking unbelievable song? They got this song “Bleed“. And on top he’s playing like 8th notes with the backbeat on 3.
So everybody’s head is moving to that, like ‘gah gah gah gah…’—I can’t even do it, right. But underneath his feet are going like ‘burta burta burta burta burta burta…’ the whole fucking song basically.
On top he’s like [mimics hi-hat, snare, etc. sounds] and underneath ‘urta urta urta urta…’. It’s like you’re going insane. You know, I always felt like if you ever heard voices, like that’s the music version of that song. Like up top would be somebody talking to ya, going like ‘Hey ya wanna go to the mall, maybe, I heard they opened like a new fucking Starbucks, blah blah, blah’ and underneath there’s demons going ‘dah di, dah di, dah di, dah di…’
It’s like a seven minute song. I’ve never fucking seen… And they played it live and it sounded as good as what they played on the record. And then the whole fucking night you never saw their faces.
It was just these fucking strobe lights going at you, lined up with the bass drum. So everybody’s fucking nodding to the beat like [mimics bass drum] and the lights are like [mimics song groove] in your fucking face.
I never thought I’d be into some shit like that. I can’t say enough how fucking unbelievable that band is. And you’re doing yourself a disservice as a human being if you never see them live. It was fucking unbelievable.
And the amount of famous drummers that I saw standing there, just fucking geeking out, big smiles on their faces, shaking their head, ya know? Reaffirming to me as just a casual fan of music that yes, what I am hearing is that unbelievable. It’s so unbelievable that drummers that I’m blown away by are blown away by this shit.”
Later on in the podcast, he says that he’ll see them when they’re in town for the rest of his life. So if you’re in Los Angeles at a Meshuggah show and you think you might have seen Bill Burr, it’s definitely him. You can hear him begin to talk about it at around the 11 minute mark.
[via theprp]
