Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index Meshuggah (named after the Yiddish word for "crazy") is a five-piece heavy metal band from Sweden whose style features pummeling guitar sounds, complex drum patterns (often in odd time signatures) and harsh, amelodic vocals. The group formed in Umeå, Sweden in 1987; two years later, Meshuggah released their first imprint, an EP entitled "Psykisk Testbild" (which can roughly be translated as "Rorschach test"). This recording displayed a straight-forward metal sound along the lines of Metallica's concurrent releases, but within that sound were hints at the more complex musical elements that the band would later develop into their signature sound. Among these are lead guitar player Fredrik Thordendal's smooth melodic solos, odd time signatures and polyrhythmic passages in which, for example, the guitars divide a measure into three beats while the drummer divides the same measure into four. Meshuggah is also the name of the king golem in Terry Pratchett's Feet of Clay. This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by fixing it. This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.