With its intricate, palm-muted riffs and technically complex songcraft, djent stands among the most celebrated — and controversial — subgeneres in metal. Credited to Fredrik Thordenal, the guitarist of Swedish extreme-music icons Meshuggah, in the mid-Nineties, the style sparked a burgeoning cottage industry of tech-metal bands, among them Periphery, Animals as Leaders, Monuments, TesseracT and Veil of Maya.

But for every progressive-leaning artist who proudly self-identified as "djent," there were several more who despised the descriptor. When asked about his band's frequent classification as a djent band in a 2012 interview, Periphery guitarist Misha Mansoor derided the movement as "a big umbrella term for any sort of progressive band," adding, "It's just so vague that I don't know what to make of it."

Now, over two decades later, Meshuggah's other guitarist, Mårten Hagström has issued an informal apology on the band's behalf for making "djent" a thing to begin with, as Blabbermouth points out.

"First of all, we're very sorry for creating that genre," he apologized to Rauta at last month's Tuska festival in Helsinki, Finland. "We didn't intend to — our bad. I think it's a misconception, that djent thing. I think it's kind of hilarious."

Hilarious how? Well, for one, Thordenthal was shit-faced when he came up with the term. "It was our lead guitar player, Fredrik, being drunk back in the day, talking to one of our old-school fans, trying to explain what type of guitar tone we were always trying to get, and he was desperately trying to say: 'We want that 'dj—' 'dj—,' 'dj—,' 'dj—,'" Hagström explained, imitating a riff. "And that guy was, like, 'What's he saying? Is that a Swedish word? Must be. Sounds like dj_, maybe 'djent'? Maybe something like that.'

"And that's where it comes from: a drunk misunderstanding, as always, with Meshuggah."

Cheers to that.