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Meshuggah: Nothing
03/04/04 || Lord K Philipson
So Meshuggah are back. I was hoping to put in a “finally” here but no can do. The 1998 “Chaosphere” was a major dissapointment from one of the bands that had always been in my good book of weird shit and dreadlocks. So I can’t say I had much hope for this album to blow me right the fuck away. But as always, I’m always curious what these fucktards will come up with.
One thing is very clear nowadays, the will never go back to actually make real songs again, as they did on their masterpiece from 1995, “Destroy Erase Improve”. But I guess that 7 years does shit to a band, sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the better. Meshuggah have probably gotten a little too weird for their own good. I find not much joy in these old favourites of mine today. One of the better songs they did as of late is the “War” tune on the 2001’s “Rare Trax”, and that one was a gift to someone in the band on his birthday. I think they should actually try to have birthdays every day from now on. If that is what is needed to make memorable songs.
Meshuggah are not easy to listen to. And I don’t think they ever intended themselves to be so that’s one goal achieved.
Start-and-stop riffs and cycles that will make you go insane. It’s impressive, it’s massive, it’s heavy as a fucken tank, but is it groovy? No. Their music nowadays is music to listen to, not groove to. It must be one of the harder bands to actually try to headbang to, and that’s not a good thing if you wanna be metal. I’m the first to agree (actually I’m not, I’m probably like the millionth) that the musicianship is flawless. And it always was.
The production is absolutely excellent. It’s all over impressive, but there are no real songs to me, and I think that’s the reason I can’t embrace this. Jens’ vocals tend to have a quite tiring effect on me as well, and I’ve seen other reviews pointing that out, so I’m probably right. I understand that these vocals are what should be in this kinda music, hell I know pretty fucken much about what’s good and all you know, but too me, it’s just kinda too much after 4 songs.
Don’t get me wrong here, I might be completely fucked and all that, I know, but I think they deserve every bit of success they achieve nowadays. They are an excellent liveband and I think it’s when played live that these songs come to their right element. On record it all sounds the same to me. Whereas “Chaosphere” was nothing but… well… chaos, this one feels more structured. More thoughtout and worked on. But the bottomline is, it doesn’t fucken groove. Not even Roland Corporation’s complete Groovebox-selection could make this fucker groove, and that’s not good.
One thing that stands out though is the massive guitarsound, and from what I’ve been told, it has nothing to do with their 8-stringed guitars as they appearantly weren’t ready when the album was recorded. I have no idea and I don’t fucken care too much as it just sounds incredibly fucken massive. That was always a trademark for these loser-hockeyteam-fanatics anyways so I’m not suprised. I´ve listened to this album well over 20 times now and I can’t still tell the tracks apart. Another not so good sign.
I will always enjoy the older Meshuggah, following 3 albums are masterpieces in my collection and I just put on “Psykisk Testbild”, “Contradiction’s collapse” or “Destroy Erase Improve” if I wanna hear the Meshuggah that I want them to sound like. This just doesn’t appeal to me. And if it doesn’t appeal to me, it just isn’t fucken awesome.
6/10 – It’s not like this album gives me nothing (pun intended), it just doesn’t give me much.
- Information
- Released: 2003
- Label: Nuclear Blast
- Website: www.meshuggah.net
- Band
- Tomas Haake: drums
- Jens Kidman: vocals
- Fredrik Thordendal: guitars, bass
- Mårten Hagström: guitars
- Tracklist
- 01. Stengah
- 02. Rational Gaze
- 03. Perpetual Black Second
- 04. Closed Eye Visuals
- 05. Glints Collide
- 06. Organic Shadows
- 07. Straws Pulled at Random
- 08. Spasm
- 09. Nebulous
- 10. Obsidian
