“Tosin Abasi told me once, the first time he heard us, he said, ‘This music is broken’”: Meshuggah's Mårten Hagström reflects on changing the face of metal guitar

Few bands have influenced the modern metal landscape quite like Meshuggah, both in terms of sound and gear. Now, guitarist Mårten Hagström has reflected on how the band changed the face of metal guitar – and blew Tosin Abasi’s mind in the process.

There’s a whole generation of metal and prog-adjacent virtuosos currently changing the guitar game that get woozy when it comes to the Swedish heavyweights. Periphery’s Misha Mansoor, Polyphia duo Tim Henson and Scott LePage, and Plini, who “grew up” on Meshuggah, are all big fans.

But Meshuggah's impact wasn't felt overnight, nor was it immediately accepted by the wider metal world.

“Sometimes we still see ourselves as the upstart oddball band that we were as kids when everybody was side-eyeing us and going, ‘What are you guys doing?’” guitarist Mårten Hagström tells the ProgCast (via Blabbermouth). “Even in the progressive genre, it was, like, ‘Dude, what are you up to? What's going on?’”

The band's vicious polyrhythms soon became the foundation for djent, thall and beyond. After being met with some skepticism from the wider metal scene, Meshuggah finally earned their flowers, cementing their reputation as the band who changed the face of metal guitar.

“Tosin [Abasi, Animals as Leaders] told me once, the first time he heard us, he said, ‘This music is broken,’” Hagström adds.

It was Meshuggah that introduced Abasi to the wonders of the eight-string guitar – something he’s since made his signature weapon. They were experimenting with the twice-extended range guitars as far back as 2002, and it redefined their sound.

“We quickly figured out that powerchord chugging and riffing didn’t really work; it wasn’t as simple as transposing ideas down to the eighth string,” Hagström once told Guitar World of their early experiments. “The tone of the instrument lent itself better to the single-string stuff we’re known for. It was like, ‘Wow, this is a new tool that makes us sound different!’”

Abasi's own adventures saw him launch the high-end Abasi Concepts in 2019. They are builds designed to “encourage people to play complex things” and write their own 'broken music'. Everyone from Spiro Dussias to Dante Swan have been doing exactly that, pushing boundaries and developing freakish new techniques as they go.

In modern metal, down-tuning to eight-string depths in such a way has helped usher in key changes to the sound of the genre. And, without Meshuggah’s influence, who knows what the modern metal landscape would look like today.