Meshuggah's Chaosphere album isn't exactly the best-represented of theirs lives. In fact, Meshuggah hasn't played anything off Chaosphere since including "New Millenium Cyanide Christ" in their setlist during a 2017 trek.
So what happened? According to drummer Tomas Haake in an interview with Loudwire, Chaosphere is just too difficult for him to play these days. Haake also notes that "Neurotica" has a lot of vocal patterns that jam a ton of lyrics into a short amount of time, all of which need to be slowed down in a live setting.
"I mean, to be fully honest, there's not much stuff on that album that isn't in any way shape or form enjoyable for me to play and I haven't played really anything off of it for a long time. I wouldn't say that 'Neurotica' towards the end a few years ago when we were still playing some of those tracks or if it was for the maybe for the 25th anniversary of the band in 2014, I think we played 'Neurotica' on that run and that was kind of cool.
"I really dig that song and it's nowadays we play to a click track and stuff so we were able to really kind of take it down and so it's actually singable for us because there a lot of lyrics in a short amount of time. So, that one kind of stands out, but then you have obviously a 'New Millennium Cyanide Christ' which we made that spoofy video for that a lot of metal fans have seen I guess over the years and that song, of course, was trademark Meshuggah for many years and we always played it. But that's another one that's really it's actually really difficult for me to play it these days.
"I don't have fully that kind of control over my feet anymore so there's a lot of tracks on that album that we probably never see the light of day again as far as like us playing it live. So, we'll see and even though now we have a U.S. tour and even though this 25th anniversary of Chaosphere coincides with that, we have no plans of playing any of that stuff for it for the tour so if people I think we're going out to promote the Chaosphere reissue. That's not really the case."
As for future plans, Haake said Meshuggah doesn't count on retiring anytime soon. Or in his own words, "We don't have any plans to hang up the coat. But as long as we feel like it's still fun and enjoyable and we can make a decent living off of it as well, that's always a crucial aspect of things as well."
