There’s nothing quite like a little bit of news from our friends over at Nuclear Blast Records to make a Fall day feel all the more refreshing. Sure that’s corney but the coffee has hit me with a great bit of energy today so there you go. Check out this brief about Sweden’s mighty Meshuggah.
The Press Release:
Swedish extreme tech-metal pioneers MESHUGGAH have announced their 2018 North American tour with special guests CODE ORANGE and TOOTHGRINDER. The tour will kick off at the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver, BC on January 23rd and make stops in Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco before concluding at The Wiltern in Los Angeles on January 29th! Following the 6 show trek, MESHUGGAH will perform at the 70,000 Tons Of Metal Cruise.
MESHUGGAH is touring in support of their highly acclaimed eighth studio album, The Violent Sleep of Reason which secured the band their first GRAMMY nomination for “Best Metal Performance.” The album also debuted at #17 on the U.S. Billboard Top 200 chart as well as landed at #9 on the Canadian Top Current Albums chart. Watch the music video for “Clockworks” on the Nuclear Blast YouTube Channel!
Tickets for the tour go on sale on Friday, December 8th at 1 PM EST at www.meshuggah.net/tour.
The Tour Dates:
1/23/2018: Commodore Ballroom – Vancouver, BC CANADA
1/24/2018: The Showbox – Seattle, WA
1/25/2018: McMenamins Crystal Ballroom
1/26/2018: Ace OF Spades – Sacramento, CA
1/28/2018: The Fillmore – San Francisco, CA*
1/29/2018: The Wiltern – Los Angeles, CA
2/1-2/5/2018: 70,000 Tons Of Metal**
* No CODE ORANGE; ** MESHUGGAH only
ABOUT MESHUGGAH: In 2017, Swedish progressive metal pioneers MESHUGGAH will be entering their 30th year of existence, defying expectations on record as to the limitations of metal, and then proving their virtuosic prowess by taking their cathedral-complex compositions to stages all over the world through the band’s legendary long tour cycles.
It all began with 1989’s self-titled 3 song EP, also commonly referred to as “Psykisk Testbild”, followed in 1991 by first fullength album Contradictions Collapse but the MESHUGGAH legend was established through the likes of 1993’s None, 1995’s groundbreaking Destroy Erase Improve and the band’s third fullength record, 1998’s Chaosphere. In 2002, Meshuggah issued Nothing, which sold over 110,000 copies in the US and garnered the band an arena tour slot with Tool, as well as a slot on Ozzfest that same year, with high validations from the biggest and most discerning progressive metal bands on the planet at the turn of the decade. Catch Thirtythree, obZen and 2012’s immense Koloss solidified the band’s reputation as creative mavericks raising the reputation of what metal could be, resulting in status as the creators and godfathers of an entire progressive music style known as djent—even if the band has a somewhat ambivalent relationship with that tag or tags of any sort.
The Violent Sleep of Reason, the band’s eighth full-length studio album, finds MESHUGGAH building upon their legacy for fearless metal sculpting within the context of extreme metal, but also recapturing some of the magic and excitement specifically within the aspect of performance, finding flow and groove that would be a challenge for any lesser band to locate, given such technical geometric madness at mischievous hand. The bands efforts did not go unnoticed as they landed a GRAMMY nomination for “Best Metal Performance for their single, “Clockworks.”
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PiercingMetal Thoughts: Fine Meshuggah, fine. Bypass NYC on the visit, see if we care over here (said in my absolute best New Yawwwwk accent for good measure). I’m just kidding because we know full well that Meshuggah hits the region a lot and who knows, perhaps these dates will be expanded upon once the 70K tons cruise is done. Having seen them a number of times over the years, I can safely say that they are quite the Metal spectacle. They’re not the biggest visual band in that sense but the sound and technical display of musical prowess will just blow you away. I haven’t see Code Orange or Toothgrinder yet myself so if the band comes around these parts I’d like to catch them too. What do you readers think about this tour? Is it something that is happening near you and you’ll be attending? Maybe you’re heading out to sea on the 70K cruise……Let me know down in the comments below.
Official Websites:
Meshuggah: https://www.meshuggah.net/
Code Orange: https://www.facebook.com/codeorangekids/
Toothgrinder: https://www.facebook.com/toothgrinder.usa/