Guitarist Mårten Hagström of Swedish experimental extreme metallers MESHUGGAH was recently interviewed on HATEBREED frontman Jamey Jasta's official podcast, "The Jasta Show". You can now listen to the chat using the SoundCloud widget below.

Asked about how the material is shaping up for MESHUGGAH's next album, Hagström said: "We're early in the writing stage… We're writing right now, but we're really early still. And me personally, I'm really attracted by the idea of taking something that is really household in metal. 'Bleed' is a good example that Fredrik [Thordendal, guitar] wrote. You have like a triplet thing that is so fucking generic metal that it can't possibly get any more generic. But you do something with it that makes it come into a new territory. Put a little bit of a different [spin]… Not astronomically just rewrite the whole fucking thing, but just tweak it a little bit. And I'm really attracted to that. Right now I'm doing this song that, in essence… it's the most tragic metal song you would ever hear, but it doesn't come across that way 'cause I just tweaked it that extra mile. And I know Tomas [Haake, drums] and Dick [Lövgren, bass] have been working on a lot of stuff that is really out there. So I think it's gonna be a pretty diverse album."

In 2014, MESHUGGAH was awarded an exclusive scholarship for its services to the Swedish and international music scene. The musicians were presented with the scholarship and diploma by SKAP president Alfons Karabuda at an intimate event in the south side of Stockholm in December.

Commemorating the 25th anniversary of the recording of its first EP, MESHUGGAH released a concert DVD / 2CD set and Blu-ray, "The Ophidian Trek", on September 30, 2014 via Nuclear Blast. With visual footage shot in the U.S. and Europe during "The Ophidian Trek" tour and festival footage from Wacken Open Air 2013 in Germany, the live audio was processed and edited by MESHUGGAH guitarist Fredrik Thordendal, mixed by Daniel Begstrand (DIMMU BORGIR, BEHEMOTH) and mastered by Mats "Limpan" Lindfors (ROXETTE, OPETH, MANDO DIAO).

"The Ophidian Trek" is MESHUGGAH's second live DVD, the first being 2010's "Alive", which debuted at position No. 8 on the Billboard Music DVD chart.