Meshuggah: The Vicious Spirit
Take five Swedish guys, give them instruments, turn on amplifiers and hide yourself in a bunker. This won’t be an easy ride.
I have started listening to Meshuggah music about 5 months ago and my attitude to it can be described as slavery. I have always looked for a band that would play heavy, multilayered, fractured and ambiguous stuff. King Crimson is good but not heavy enough. I love how they manage to make guitars ‘compete’ with bass and drums, I love Robert Fripp’s extraterrestrial, soundscape solos — but it’s no good for head-banging! On the other hand Tool is heavy and ambiguous but their music is too symmetrical and predictable. Their experiments with guitar sound are awesome but there are still some pieces lacking in the puzzle.
Meshuggah: a perfect amalgamate of fractal mathematics, controlled chaos and ambiguity. Ultra-loud, brutal, dynamic and selective sound. Atmosphere of post-apocalyptic cyberspace. You never know what happens in next measure. What else could a metal freak want?
Let’s take a quick look at one of their latest albums — “I” (2004). It consists of one composition, 21 minutes long. 21 minutes of metal music? Sigh, that must be tiring, you might say. Well I must protest. This composition emerges with around 8 different riffs, 4 solos and lyrics that would tremble every cyberpunk fan:
I — this fractal illusion burning away all structure toward the obscene
I — to cleanse, to purge, to breach eternity and smother all life
Blind — these mortal men of clay, divine and dying in their harnessed form
I — this furnace of limitless hate. Bestial, pure
(…)
Shifting through worlds from chaos, to chaos, to chaos
I devour this manure of existence — infertile, barren, whole
Rancid redeemer. Virulent deterioration of faith
(…)
There are many things that you would never expect to happen in a regular metal composition: guitarists play in 4/4 and drummer plays in 3/4 or something even more twisted, I have never managed to count it. There are sudden quiet-outs and irregular explosions of guitar-induced massacre. This composition is like a suite written by a madman: almost half an hour of unpredictable eruptions of anger, passion and inhuman energy.
Their latest album — “Catch 33” released in 2005 is even better. It captures whole a lot more of mysterious atmosphere and provides even more fractured harmonical and rhythmical solutions.
To be honest it’s very difficult to describe Meshuggah music. In fact it’s almost impossible to describe any music in my opinion. Nevertheless I hope that I enticed you a little bit to listen to it. It’s worth it even if you don’t like metal: to hear all these impossible skills and ideas.
January 6th, 2006 at 7:08 am
Awesome review. I’ll definitely give it a listen.
Have you ever seen them live?
January 6th, 2006 at 6:07 pm
Thanks guys!
Jim: no, unfortunately I haven’t. They never came to Poland. Yet.