| Fredrik Thordendal | |
|---|---|
Fredrik Thordendal performing live at Mondo, Stockholm, Sweden during May 2005. |
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Fredrik Thordendal |
| Born | February 11, 1970 |
| Origin | Umeå, Sweden |
| Genres | Experimental metal, heavy metal, djent, progressive metal, technical death metal |
| Occupations | Musician, songwriter |
| Instruments | Guitar, bass, keyboard, vocal, programming, drums |
| Associated acts | Meshuggah Fredrik Thordendal's Special Defects |
| Notable instruments | |
| Custom Nevborn and Ibanez 8- and 7-strings | |
Fredrik Thordendal (born February 11, 1970) is the lead guitarist and a founding member of the Swedish experimental metal band Meshuggah.
He, along with Meshuggah's rhythm guitarist Mårten Hagström were rated #35 by Guitar World in the top 100 greatest heavy metal guitarists of all-time.[1] He is born in Sweden, but his parents was both immigrants from Germany, and Thordendal was baptized Martin Birger. But in 1989 he changed name to Fredrik Thordendal.
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Under the name Fredrik Thordendal's Special Defects, Thordendal released a solo album in 1997 titled Sol Niger Within with Ultimate Audio Entertainment. The album was remixed and re-released by Ultimate Audio Entertainment and Relapse Records in 1999 under the title Sol Niger Within version 3.33. The re-release contains two bonus tracks but omits several parts of the original version. Thordendal also featured on several tracks for drummer Morgan Ågren's Mats/Morgan Band.
As a guitarist, Thordendal draws attention with his clean, complex lead-playing, inspired by jazz fusion guitarist Allan Holdsworth, and complex rhythm-playing featuring prominent polymetric passages. These characteristics are augmented by his use of seven and eight-string guitars. He has a large contribution to songwriting, as well as providing backing vocals for some songs during live performances. He also writes the basslines and performs electric bass in the studio, Dick Lövgren covering these parts during live performances.
Thordendal is also a producer of some note, having produced all of Meshuggah's recent material and also releases for various other bands, Switzerland's Fragment among them.
Thordendal has featured in numerous side-projects, such as XXX Atomic Toejam with Petter Marklund. The project had released a 7" two-track single "Celebration" under the name Sepülchre Inc., then took the moniker XXX Atomic Toejam and issued an MCD entitled "A Gathering Of The Tribes For The First / Last Human Be-In" on Cold Meat Industry and also featured a track on the "Karmanik Collection" compilation. A full-length album was long announced, but never surfaced. Thordendal also played bass for Petter Marklund's solo project Memorandum and together with Marklund remixed tracks on the 1995 compilation album "Ars Moriendi".
Thordendal features in the Darkane track "Psychic Pain" from the album Insanity, performing lead guitar. Thordendal also contributed to the song "Asphyxiate" which can be found on Scarve's album Irradiant. He played a guitar solo on the title track of the Devin Townsend Project album Deconstruction.
Thordendal's current main guitars are Ibanez Custom 8-String which feature RG-shaped or Iceman-shaped alder bodies with 3-piece maple bolt-on/neck-thru necks (30" {750mm}), rosewood fingerboards (no inlays), fixed bridge (actually an Ibanez FX-Edge fixed tremolo), one volume, one tone, and one Lundgren Model 8 pickup. The fixed bridge on one of his 8 strings has since been replaced with a Kahler tremolo system. Thordendal also owns a 7-string acoustic guitar, also made by Ibanez. For some time he also used Nevborn guitars. This company made Meshuggah their first 8 string guitars: however these guitars suffered from intonation problems, causing Thordendal to abandon the company and switch to exclusively using Ibanez guitars.
Tuning:
For early Meshuggah releases, Fredrik tuned his 7 strings in B♭tuning (one half step below standard tuning). He followed suit when he started using 8 string guitars, tuning them down to F tuning. It was explained in an interview that they tuned their guitars this way because in the early days of Meshuggah, before Jens Kidman adopted his signature vocal style, it was easier for him to sing in the key of Eb or Bb. Occasionally Thordendal deviates from his "standard" tuning: on the songs "Glints Collide", "Nebulous", "Organic Shadows", "Perpetual Black Second", and "Stengah" he tunes the low F string of his 8 string guitar a half step lower to E. On "Spasm" he tunes it even lower from that, down to Bb, making the 8th string an octave below the 7th.
Guitar Strings, DR Strings:
String gauges: .070 - .052 - .042 - .036 - .026 - .016 - .011 - .009. "Metalkult" On May 1, 2008.
Meshuggah
Fredrik Thordendal's Special Defects
The Devin Townsend Project
Gojira
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