Before hitting North America on their current tour, the members of Meshuggah would have been glad to focus on rehearsing their mind-shattering riffs. But according to drummer Tomas Haake, the members of the Swedish death-metal outfit spent an inordinate amount of time battling to get U.S. Employment Insurance Numbers.

“Over the last month, it was all kinds of bullshit with paperwork and setting up a touring corporation in the U.S.,” says the 36-year-old, on the line from the quintet’s Fear and Loathing Studios in Stockholm. “We’re a very self-contained band. We don’t have separate management. So when these issues arise, we have to do it all ourselves.”

Haake definitely believes in a hands-on approach. Not only has he seen Meshuggah advance toward becoming, as he puts it, a “band without outside influences” since forming in 1987, he’s also evolved into one of metal’s most feared skinsmen. His style, which is all complex patterns delivered with military precision, makes him a god for Modern Drummer readers. And his prowess hasn’t gone unnoticed in the mainstream; last month, Haake defeated Slayer’s Dave Lombardo for Best Heavy Metal Drummer honours in a mock elimination tournament in last month’s Blender.

Envision Haake Morse-coding a 23/16 time signature on the bass drums, juxtaposed against a 4/4 snare-and-cymbals groove, as he does in the intro to “New Millennium Cyanide Christ”, from 1998’s Chaosphere. Then throw in the viciously down-tuned eight-string guitars of Fredrik Thordendal and Mårten Hagström, the sternum-crushing lines of bassist Dick Lövgren, and the implacable roaring of vocalist Jens Kidman, and you’ve captured the essential Meshuggah sound. A jazz fanatic might dig the technical subtleties, but emotionally, it’s like being beaten up by RoboCop and the Terminator.

“We have a firm awareness of what we are and the type of music we play,” says Haake, who admires iconoclastic groups such as the Mars Volta and Tool. “It’s a very narrow, niche type of music. We know we’re never going to sell a million copies of any album.”

Still, with its new CD, obZen, Meshuggah could surpass the 100,000 copies that its 2002 breakthrough Nothing sold stateside after an Ozzfest stint. Landing a slot on the current farewell tour of industrial pioneers Ministry should help. Mainly, though, the more linear fury of tracks like “Bleed” and “This Spiteful Snake” might hold greater appeal for fans of vintage Metallica or contemporary headbanging titans like Lamb of God and Gojira.

“This album is weird in some ways, because it comes across as one of our more accessible and forthright albums, but it’s also the most difficult to play as a musician,” Haake says. “The title track was recorded at 170 beats per minute, which is an awkward tempo for me. And on ‘Bleed’, I had to change my whole approach on the bass drums, tap-dancing on the pedals in flurries.”

Meshuggah experimented with close to 30 different mixes of obZen. After that arduous process, the band members could undoubtedly relate to the bloodied, three-armed man on the album’s cover.

“The artwork suggests that human beings have found their balance or Zen in bloodshed and violence,” Haake states. “That concept runs like a red thread throughout my lyrics.”

Meshuggah opens for Ministry at the Croatian Cultural Centre next Thursday (March 27), and the Commodore Ballroom next Friday (March 28).