Chris Slack at Gravemusic.com recently caught up with MESHUGGAH drummer Tomas Haake. The following is an excerpt from the interview:

Q: Is there a song on ObZen that you could single out as the one you are most proud of? If so please explain why.

Haake: "That would probably be 'Bleed'. The reason I am most proud of it is that for all of us, now that we are performing it live, some nights it doesn't quite work all the way but we make it work. It's getting better by the day though. It was a big effort for me to learn, I had to find a totally new approach to playing the double bass drums to be able to do that stuff. I had never really done anything like that before like the fast bursts that go all the way through the song basically. So I actually spent as much time practicing that track alone as I did with all of the other tracks combined. It's kind of a big feat to change your approach like that and I'm glad we were able to nail it for the album. For a while we didn't even know if it was going to make it to the album."

Q: I really look forward to seeing you guys perform that tonight; it's really an insane song.

Haake: "Yeah, it pretty much is. It's a hard one to do. It's one of those tracks where you can't lose it anywhere or it's really, really hard to get back into it. Once the patterns start breaking up and they're kind of permuting over time and it just goes on and on. It's really one of those track live where there isn't much headbanging and such going on because everyone needs to focus very much on what they are doing. But still I think that the song comes out strong anyway."

Q: Many of the more acclaimed drummers in metal such as Gene Hoglan, Flo Mounier, Derek Roddy and Mike Portnoy have released instructional DVDs. Do you have any plans on doing anything like that?

Haake: "No, not really. I wouldn't even know where to start with something like that. I would love to do something like that but at the same time I wouldn't really know how to show people as I've never really reflected much on what we do. We just play it as music and as far as the technical aspects that come into play where the drumming goes I just kind of play and don't think to much about it. So for me it seems it would be kind of hard for me to explain stuff. Then again instructional videos are not always instructional. They can be more or less entertainment of just playing stuff so you can see what the drummer is actually doing. Maybe I will do something like that. Perhaps as an instructional thing but more of something where you have different camera angles and you can actually see me playing. Usually in the live situation one doesn't actually see much, they just see arms wailing and it's kind of hard to make out what's going on. I could at least take it down in tempo and stuff like that. Maybe, but there is nothing in the works like that currently."

Go to this location for the complete interview.