“It’s my wedding and I’ll do whatever I want”: Meshuggah featured on Wolfgang Van Halen’s wedding playlist
“Anyone over 40 will be terrified,” he said prior to the big day.
Image: Jens KIdman/Getty
After admitting in July that he could fall asleep listening to Meshuggah, Wolfgang Van Halen has doubled down on his love of the Swedish extreme metal stalwarts, revealing that they even had a place on his wedding playlist.
Wolfgang married Andraia Allsop on Sunday, 15 October surrounded by 90 guests at their Los Angeles home.
According to People, while his fiancé Allsop chose the more conventional Everybody Loves Somebody by Dean Martin to walk down the aisle to, Wolfgang later took the opportunity to delight his guests with some technically complex polyrhythms and devilishly drop-tuned guitars.
“I’m sure our DJ is going to look at some of these songs and be like, ‘What?’ Wolfgang said prior to the big day.
“When I talked to our DJ, he was very excited about our vision,” Andraia added. “The one thing that I want, I want Wolfie to have his moment of one of his favourite bands, Meshuggah.”
Wolfgang explained: “They’re very progressive metal, I think to anybody, to the non-informed crowd though, it would probably just sound like death metal. Anyone over 40 will be terrified. But you know what? It’s my wedding and I’ll do whatever I want.”
We’re unsure exactly which Meshuggah song featured on the playlist, but it could be Bleed [from 2008’s obZen], as this was the track Wolfgang admitted he could fall asleep to.
Wolfgang did, however, opt for something a little more heartfelt to walk down the aisle with his mother Valerie Bertinelli to: an instrumental piece written for him by his late father, Eddie Van Halen.
“The song that my father had written for me, it’s an instrumental piece called 316,” he said. “It’ll be a nice way to include my dad.”
“Our goal was just to bring all of our closest family and friends together,” added Andraia. “The past few years, not only with the world, but also with personal tragedies, haven’t been the easiest, but we wanted to create this wedding as a celebration not only just for us to get married, but a celebration for the people we love.”