BigMusicGeek.com recently caught up with MESHUGGAH guitarist Mårten Hagström to discuss the band's new album, ObZen. The following is an excerpt from the interview:

BMG: What was the main inspiration behind the title ObZen?

Mårten Hagström: “Basically, Tomas (Haake) our drummer and I were sittin’ around one night having a beer talkin’ about what we were going to do lyrically on this album because. Most of the time, he’s the one writing the lyrics. He was sayin’ that he had a bunch of lyrics lined up that he had been writing for regular songs, but we hadn’t had any chance to use them because the last few albums have had these monumentally long songs. He was sayin’ that he liked some of them very much and that he wanted to re-write them a little bit to make them more or less the usual Meshuggah style, but a little bit more to the point…a little bit uglier, basically. That, we felt, was fitting to how we thought the album was going to be like…a little bit more aggressive and to the point. That made him think about what would be a good way to sum up the lyrical aspect of this album. ObZen basically just connects the obscene with Zen Buddhism, kinda suggesting that maybe society is finding its moment of inner peace or Zen through the obscene, through bloodshed and obscenity in general, ya know? That aspect of the animal in us humans, ya know?”

BMG: Is it safe to assume the world’s current "…less than stellar…" political state was at least in part an influence?

Mårten Hagström: “Yeah, we’ve never really been a political band in any way. We want people to make up their own minds in regards to when they read lyrics are about, but the whole title is a comment about how our leaders are always taking pride in how we are supposed to be so civilized, how out of the goodness of our hearts we’re doing so many great deeds. You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to see that it’s so obvious that the driving force is greed for most of what’s going on. Those who are in power are probably the ones least fit to wield that sword, ya know? It’s a very paradoxical thing which makes all those aspirations for good sound very hollow and hypocritical. It’s a comment on how we always find a way back to that primordial tug of war between pride, fear and greed…those basic ugly instincts.”

Go to this location for the complete interview.