With Meshuggah entering the fifth day of their US headlining tour and Jens Kidman still sidelined with the flu, it’s uncertain as to whether he’ll be performing in New York tonight. Yesterday in Philadelphia at the TLA, he still wasn’t up for the task, but he performed anyway. How was that possible? Meet “Jens Kidman.” While it might look like it’s merely a blow-up doll with clothes and a mic attached to a stripper pole, that was as close as you were going to get to seeing the singer last night. However, the band played along to tracks of his vocals, so if you were drunk and far away enough, maybe you were none the wiser. As we said earlier, Meshuggah is one of the few bands that’s so damn good instrumentally, they could pull off playing without Kidman and still get away with it.

[photo courtesy of Steve Wells from The Hixon]