If you're going to go out, they say, you should go out with a bang. That's exactly what we did last Saturday night at the Place Bell in Laval. It was our final concert of the year and it was headlined by the mighty Meshuggah. The Swedish extreme metallers have been dominating the stage since the late 1980's and show no signs of slowing down any time soon. At this point I'd usually talk a little bit about my experience with the band, but the truth of the matter is that I don't have one. Their existence on my personal radar is pretty much limited to yelling "Gesundheit!" at my friend Louie while we would pass their albums at a music store and then asking him how to pronounce the name. It's still a classic bit of humour as far as I am concerned. I did do a little bit of looking in to them before the show. Known for the complex song structures and
innovative style, Meshuggah is known as one of the most important and influential bands in the Extreme Metal genre, though they've also been described as being Progessive or Experiemental Metal. Yes, there are a whole lot of genres and sub-genres for this style of music. They've been named as one of the ten most important bands in metal and hard rock by Rolling Stone Magazine and have a huge following in Europe and across the globe as well. In addition to their music, they have a very unique lighting structure for their shows, which was a both great to see and challenging to work with. I still had fun with it though, trying to time the flashes of light to get a shot of an eye or even some silhouette style shots as 
well. I particularly like the photographs of guitarist Mårten Hagström. Between the shadows and his hair, he looks like some kind of faceless warrior straight out of The Lord of the Rings. Meshuggah have nine albums to their name, the most recent of which, Immutable, was released last year. It was my first Meshuggah concert, and what an introduction. Just before the show began, my friend Louie, was in the crowd, texted me the message 'Welcome to Meshuggah', a message that in hindsight was just perfect as their concert isn't just about the music, it is a complete sensory experience. The first photograph was taken at f/4, 1/160sec, ISO 10000 at 59mm, the second photograph was taken at f/3.2, 1/80sec, ISO 4000 at 24mm and the third photograph was taken at f/3.2, 1/200sec, ISO 4000 at 70mm. Here are several more photographs of their performance.
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