If you love to djent on the tubs with a sneaky polyrhythm hear and there, don’t expect legendary metal drummer Tomas Haake of genre pioneers Meshuggah to be subscribing to your channel any time soon.
“I don’t really care so much for technical drummers. There are so many drummers that are great technicians and they would [run circles] around me all day long, so to speak, on a technical level” he revealed in a recent interview with DrumTalk.
“I don’t go to look at drummers doing technical stuff. But when you see someone that has ‘it’… like Dave Lombardo (ex-Slayer) is one of those drummers.”
It’s not surprising to hear that the drummer isn’t a fan of choppy drums – his band even went as far as to apologize for contributing to the creation of the technically inclined “djent” sub-genre of metal.
The musician also gave a shout out to Baroness and Trans Am’s drummer Sebastian Thompson (check out Baroness’ 2019 masterpiece Gold and Grey here btw), praising him for his “musical” focus as opposed to wow-factor.
Read: Our interview with the band from back in 2013
“If you listen to a Trans Am recording, every track has the perfect drums for it — very musical playing. So it doesn’t have to be a certain way, and definitely not technical” he said.
While Meshuggah certainly tick the box for technical excellence, it’s hard to deny the musical sensitivity present in so much of Hakke’s work.
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Watch – Tomas Hakke performing djent standard Bleed
Meshuggah hasn’t released a record since 2016’s philosophically titled The Violent Sleep Of Reason. Hakke can surely expect some close scrutiny to be paid to his performance on whatever the band has next in-store.
