METALEATER Exclusive - MESHUGGAH Drummer Says Shoulder Surgery "Totally A Rumor"

Posted: April 01, 2008

METALEATER scribe Philip A. Wickstrand spoke exclusively with MESHUGGAH drummer Tomas Haake this past Sunday (March 30, 2008) at the Roseland Theater in Portland, OR. Here are a few extracts from the conversation:

First off, how's the tour been so far? You're what, about a week into it?

Tomas Haake: "Yeah, this is like the fifth show today, so it's kind of early on in the tour. It's been good so far, though. We missed a show in Calgary and we only played a super short set at the first Vancouver show due to different delays and stuff like that, but from now on, I think everything's sorted and everything's kinda running smoothly, so we shouldn't run into any more of that stuff, I think. It's been good, absolutely - we had a great reception last night, the Vancouver show; the second one of those was good. The first one, we only played like fifteen minutes, three songs because of all the delays and stuff."

What's it feel like being selected as main support for MINISTRY on their final U.S. tour?

Tomas Haake: "It's great. It's awesome, you know. We're stoked to be out here and we're glad that they wanted to bring us along for this and for us, it's also perfect timing with the release of the new album and everything, so we couldn't have had a better tour than this, so it's all good."

I read somewhere you might have to take some time off for shoulder surgery sometime during the tour.

Tomas Haake: "No - that's a vicious rumor."

Oh, okay.

Tomas Haake: "Yeah, where did you see that? Was it Blabbermouth? Okay. I don't know how you would go about killing a rumor like that, 'cause it's not true. At all. That's totally a rumor. I mean, I have shoulder impingement. I do exercises now on a daily basis and I've done so for the past month and a half. I haven't felt it once yet on any show and hopefully I won't even need to have the surgery, but I'm at least hoping to be able to play all the tours for this album out before I have any surgery done, so there's no way I'm going to do anything in the middle of this tour and it's not bothering me at all now. Like, three, four months ago, I could barely lift my arm up straight up to the side like this. There is no, not even a hint, of pain of me doing that now, so those exercises have really helped. Like, the exercises basically just strengthen the rotator cuff and the muscles around the shoulder and once I started doing those, I've had really good effects from that so far, so it's been working really good. So, unfortunately, that's just a rumor."

I should say fortunately.

Tomas Haake: "Yeah. (laughter) Fortunately, it's a rumor, but unfortunately, there's a lot of rumors always."

Watch for the full interview coming to METALEATER soon.