Labels: Nuclear Blast
Review by: Kunal Nandi
Meshuggah simply cannot be human. They are four terminators, handed musical instruments and programmed to crush humanity through the destructive power of metal.
I haven’t heard anything so single-minded in ages. The first thing that strikes you is how random it sounds. Rhythmically, it feels completely fucked! You’d think that would make it seriously hard, hard work to listen to, let alone enjoy, which is something that is not helped by the fact that the songs are virtually interchangeable, with a non-existent variety in sound (even the singer’s roar remains constant, with little or no inflection). That’s not a criticism in this case though – Meshuggah have been a bit of a cult band for nigh on 15 years now, so they’ve settled into their groove (or lack of) and are sticking to it.
As if being screwed beat-wise wasn’t enough, the damn thing’s almost totally atonal. There’s rarely a glimmer of a catchy tune or a hummable melody throughout (except maybe one bit on track 7). The band teases and tickles
with quick, crushing passages, and for at least a couple of seconds you’ve got a handle on things, but then it immediately wrong-foots you and careers off somewhere else. It’s scary. You have bands like The Dillinger Escape
Plan and Converge, which are constantly jamming in as many crazy bits in as short a time as possible, whereas Meshuggah’s chaos is somehow more structured. The fact that the four musicians here can be completely locked together, despite playing incredibly complex music is just frightening.
And this is heavy. And I mean dick-punchingly HE-VEEEE! So heavy in fact, that the band had to commission some dude to make them special 8-string guitars (usually guitars have 6) to deal with the low end. Ridiculous. An awesome production job means you can hear every chug, every wail, every scream…
So, it may be a bit much to take in one sitting, but if you need a bit of mental floss to blast away the cobwebs, this is easily the best thing around right now.