Meshuggah drummer Tomas Haake speaks ahead of Birmingham gig

The Death Match Hall of Famers will be playing songs from their 30-year career, including tunes from last year's The Violent Sleep of Reason record.

The avant garde rockers, including face-pulling frontman Jens Kidman released their debut album, Contradictions Collapse, in 1991. They've played Ozzfest, Download and been nominated for a Swedish Grammy.

Drummer Tomas Haake says the band have been delighted to celebrate their third decade by recording a record that fuses different strands of rock.

The 10 songs for their The Violent Sleep of Reason record were recorded virtually live, an approach the band hasn't used for many years. Haake says: "It's something we had done but it's certainly been more than 20 years. Either it was the None EP from '93 or Destroy Erase Improve from '95 that was the last time we recorded live in that fashion where we recorded several instruments simultaneously.

"We wanted to old-school it and get back to that and properly rehearse the album before going into the studio. So we as a whole band knew the material and that's what we did this time."

The band have been celebrating their heritage by re-releasing music from across their career as part of the 25 Years of Musical Deviance Box Set.

Haake adds: "You just kind of go through life and it's like, 'Yeah, let's do another album' and then you tour. You have some time off and you try to write another album and you succeed at that. But you don't really reflect on it as far as how long the band have been around and stuff like that.

"So it was really cool in that sense because it definitely takes you back. I don't listen to the old albums, the albums from the 90s, and I don't really look at pictures from that time because you're busy going through life doing other stuff. So in that sense it's really cool."

"We could hear influences like Metallica, Bay Area thrash, Anthrax and bands like that but it was still something that had kind of a different vibe."

He got the audition through a man at a music store in Umea, who happened to have his number. "It was in the days way before cellphones but he had my phone number. He called my parents and got in touch with me that way and the rest is kind of history. I still cherish the first album even though I wasn't on it just for what it was and what it meant to me."

The band poured their heart and soul into Contradictions Collapse, their debut album. They would rehearse for 10 to 14 hours straight without eating.

"That's how excited we were. I was very fortunate because I wasn't at all good enough to play that music. Where the old drummer left off, I wasn't anywhere close to his capabilities when he left the band. I was very fortunate the guys saw I had something going there but we really had to practice extremely hard for the first year to make that album happen. It really kind of reshaped me completely as a drummer.

"Previously, I was more of a heavy metal drummer but I played some thrash metal and stuff like that. I owned a double pedal but it was nowhere close to the complexity they had going on. It was a very hard time but at the same time it was a very formative time in the sense that it really changed me as a drummer."

By Andy Richardson