obZen
Meshuggah | Obzen
Technical-metal band Meshuggah is about to release their 9th album, “obZen,” on March 7th, 2008. Meshuggah is by far one of the most unique artists out there in the world of music (album covers also suggest this talent for the bizzare extends elsewhere). This band is a hard one for us genere-geeks to really classify, as they really are in a class all their own.
Formed in 1987, this Sweedish ensemble has evolved drastically over the last 20 years. Their style is not something a casual fan of music could appreciate. Seemingly erratic tempo changes are in fact quite defineable. Hideously defiant time signatures, with respect to all contemporary music, resemble something generated by the pulsing data stream of mechanical components. Beyond that, each instrument (better referred to as “layers”) can change time signatures from one another, yet still ascribe to a deterministic formula as a whole. Lyrical content ranges from the typical socio-political soothsayings of punk, metal, and rock countercultures, to the descriptions of the inner workings of human consciousness as dictated from some other-worldly alien analytical device. Early discographic (I made that word up, chill…) releases may resemble something more friendly to those un-accustomed to the deviance from pop-music formula. As time progresses, Meshuggah’s compositional style becomes far more experimental, downtuned, flawlessly synched, blisteringly heavy, and vastly interesting. In short, they live up to their name, which is Yiddish for “crazy.”
Meshuggah’s aim is to explore a very unique, auditorially-theatrical, imaginative, and art-savvy style. Lets say progressive would never give enough detail to reveal their style. They express pure stoicism through sound, which is often misinterpereted as some loud, angry, intrusive, and violent noise by the unaware and uninformed. While its easy to see that most listeners wouldnt outright “like” their material, as it isnt valued for entertainment, all consumers of art would certainly enjoy the experience, and find it vastly interesting upon deep inspection. Mathematicians, too, would fall in love with the honed and developed affinity of Mesghuggah’s leanings towards formulatic composition, and symmetrical, mechanical nature. Imagine yourself inside of something akin to “the Cube” from Transformers (a machine so large and powerful it has the ability to create and destroy whole worlds), you are trapped within the main processing sector, and every single bit and piece of this machine’s guts are spotless, shiny, and seething with power. All around you are pounding instruments of information, flowing electricity, and deafaning churns as this machine floats timelessly through space, purpose unkown, origin unknown, alien to anything terrestrial, yet flourishing with obscured purpose. Imagine this, and you can sort of get a feel for what the music is like. If not, well, its great to headbang to, if you can get past the atypical time sigs!
Each layer of sound operates like its own seperate child process of the main control unit (which can represent each instrument). Within each childprocess can be spawned new threads (which can represent flavorful licks like bends, hammering, unanticipated palm muting, wammies, FX boards & mixers, etc). The machine that is Meshuggah is able to dictate to each process independently, creating a whirlwind of sound that is quite organized, and seemingly non-human.
Vocals arent necessarily the most interesting aspect, unless youre a metalhead at heart. Jens Kidman can let out 30 second long bellows of furosity (again, I made the word up, chill…) while pelting his audience with multidimensional oddities. Rarely are clean vocals heard (note: ‘clean’ in heavy metal has nothing to do with content, only technique), as his throat seems to be able to handle more punishment than an Irish husband’s ears. Quite befitting for some odd robotic device merely delivering information from source to destination - his tonality rarely changes. While this can get a bit boring to the non metalers out there, its always emitted with complete control and strong form.
Guitar work is where things become interesting. It has been said that the most amazing talent the guitarists posess is to play and chew gum at the same time (quote: Metal Maniacs magazine, circa 1998). The guitarists can move far off the base of the percussionary time signature, representing a sort of meditative trance being necessary to not become distracted by unanticipated beats. Early discographic style is quite comparable to most trends in 80s-early90s thrash - standard tuning (perhaps one step flat), basic distortion, lots of gallops, blast beat triplets, and power chords. Progression throughout the discog has led up to extreme end downtuning (im guessing drop B and lower at this point!) Slower, thicker, more developed sound from chord usage (which is minimal - individual notes at this level of downtuning stand strong on their own), while blast beats and triplet palm mutes are quite present (and rattle the bones of those dead thousands of years, given how low they hit). Newer tracks remind me of a giant pendulum swinging from highs down to the lowest of lows, and shattering tectonic plates upon impact. Needless to say, the tonality is very well developed and produced. Palm mutes sink into your skin like thousands of electrified, jagged teeth. Open strings melt your ears with bass. Its a good time.
Beyond the guitar layer itself, each guitarist (Mårten Hagström, Dick Lövgren, and Fredrik Thordendal) can become its own “process” spawning its own “threads.” Each can move into a seperate time-signature space, creating an incredibly unique style. Leads are nothing reminiscent of any other artist out there - seemingly erratic yet over time being bound by some other-wordly formula. Dissonant, emotionless, yet still accomplishing this feeling of being frozen in time. Each guitarist can synchronize, seperate time sigs, and resynch to complete the symmetry of their style. In short - listen carefully, or youll either miss most of the information or become quite confused.
Drums (Thomas Haake) are most certainly the key process of this music-machine. Meshuggah’s percussionist (as “drummer” is far too generic of a classifier here) can, at times, seem like several people combined into one body. Perhaps, several child processes unto himself. Hats and highs, snares and mids, and toms and lows all seem to operate on seperate time signatures, probaby intimidating even the most profound of jazz percussionists. Meshuggah can establish a really thick, heavy beat for a solid 20 seconds, then in one single frame transform it into what sounds like many beats operating chaotically, over time revealing their truely patternistic nature. What seems like chaos is really quite organized - its just a technique absent in modern culture, and very hard to wrap your imaginative-ear around. Dont worry, Meshuggah is well prepared to handle overclocking, as their percussionist often leads them into a very intense direction.
On to obZen! I was very dissapointed with their prior release, “Catch-33.” It was just way too, shall i say, “performancy,” for my tastes (all the above listed attributes were beyond forefront and present, to the extreme). ObZen alleviates this. Im loving it just like I loved “Destroy Erase Improve.” It is nothing like that album, however. Think the speed and intensity of D.E.I. but the tonality and dynamics of “Nothing.”
Downtuned to the lowest of low, their guitars may as well be basses at this point. There are pleanty of speedy, blast-beaty sections to appaiese the appreciative of the more simpler end of metal, and an equal amount of experimental and diversely-formulatic presence for those who love Meshuggah’s unique style. Vocals are to be expected as per the last 4 releases, and the drums remind me of a much faster version of “Nothing” (just doesnt have the groovy beat that “Chaosphere” or “D.E.I.” had - much less fluid, much more mechanical). All around: excellent album. Meshuggah is quite alive after these last 20 years, and still evolving their exceptionally unique style. A prior fan will love this release. A prior critic will hate it like all the others (except for the first two, which are much more “crowd-friendly”). Anyone loving for the unique, odd, and artistic, will be able to appreciate this with a bit of patience.
LINKS:
- Meshuggah website
- Myspace
- WIKI: READ THIS!
- Article on Downtuning, and other metal technique as its history long preceeds contemporary music (thank you, Wagner)
- Article on Wagnerian Opera and Heavy Metal
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