Funny that Sweden ain't mentioned there with atleast bands like At the Gates, In Flames and Dark Tranquillity (I saw some mention of Opeth)...
Entombed was my favourite Swedish band - esp the Clandestine album.
Today, it seems that half the kids under 25 know more about Meshuggah than I do. :-)
As a fellow Swede, this is a bit funny:
http://www.deathmetal.org/wp-content/uploads/Metal_bands_per...
What I don't get is why Finland don't have more famous metal bands? If you check a jukebox in Sweden, typically at least half is factory made pop music made to sell for money. In Finland, half is good hard rock and metal.
(Edit: For a good take on metal, search for the interviews with the Darkthrone drummer on Youtube. See both the old and new ones. It gives a strange feeling how he dismisses everything I like... :-) )
What's interesting to me about those bands is that they took some of the elements of Meshuggah's sound - the complex time and extended range instruments - but usually end up with something that's not as heavy or extreme, often having very melodic sections and lots of clean singing.
For a long time it seemed the direction was a bit one way - bands tending to get more extreme - and while that's still the case it's maybe going the other way at the same time.
Gojira, for example has been carrying the Meshuggah sound forward while Between the Buried and Me, who was born from very technical and chaotic metal, almost devoid of groove, to extremely proggy and theatrical like Dream Theater.
Mastodon moved closer to rock from technical death metal and Opeth once a paragon of death metal, doesn't even use death vocals any more.
For me at least it has been very interesting to see the exchange of ideas.
IMHO, you can't be more metal than to play black metal in a country where you would be killed if identified... :-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS73YZgqGx0
Here is an article about another band in Saudi A: http://www.vice.com/read/anti-religious-black-metal-band-in-...
(And no, I'm not metal. I just like the music.)