~| Synaptical glitch looking glass
So enticing, real and free of lies
Prodigious, omnifarious
It nourishes, it feeds my starving eyes |~
Hello fellow Steemians! I hope you're holding on to something, cause today we're taking a look at the Swedish metal group, Meshuggah.
Meshuggah have been active since the beginning of the 90s, and are still touring and releasing records.
They are often hailed as the originators of a genre called simply, "Djent". It's widely accepted to be a term describing the sound their strings make as they hit a note, usually due to using extreme distortion settings and detuned instruments. The genre is a blend of extreme metal tendencies layered atop a mathematical chaos of syncopated drums and polyrythmic guitars.
Nothing
To start us off we'll take a look at the album "Nothing". An album that sounds like a futuristic torture chamber, using hypnotic riffs to lock you in, the message is loud and clear from the vocal screams. The rythm has this effect of seemingly floating freely, whilst at the same time you have a constant cymbal keeping you in a groovy 4/4 beat.
The album opens with "Stengah", a dominating guitar riff locked in one side of the stereo field, waiting to be joined by the rest of the pieces. It is a beasty track that seems to go nowhere forever while arriving constantly. moving on , the track "Rational Gaze", keeps this hypnotic riffage going, with a sinister vibe to it, synths floating up ahead.
The track I wanna show you from this record is "Straws Pulled at Random", a trackname I feel describes this groups style quite a bit. It does feel like their riffs are just random notes from strings pulled randomly. However, when you sit down and listen, you will see the fractal nature their tracks have.
Straws Pulled at Random
Catch Thirty-Three
This is a concept album, in the sense that it is a collection of tracks that all go together a single continuous track. This is why the track consists of 13 tracks, all of which are quite short(<4 minutes) apart from one track that is 13 minutes long.
It opens with "Autonomy Lost", our overture to the riff that will follow us through this album. A heavy rythmic feel that feels almost robotic, if it weren't for the almost tangible swinging of their guitar strings. Tracks like "The Paradoxical Spiral", are like interludes in the riff-road we were just roaring down. Giving us a moments respice before it starts hammering down again with a new movement.
The track I wanna show you is the two-piece movement, "In Death - Is Life" and "In Death - Is Death". A massive piece, flowing a tapestry of the previous movements, with a rythm that makes it difficult to form a single thought.
In Death - Is Life/Death
Obzen
Obzen, the 2008 release that shook up the modern metal scene for me. The production value has been upgraded, and their structure is a bit more acessible. Exchanging some of the math-geekery for straight up speed and attitude made the Djent genre explode when this record came out. Suddenly everyone wanted to tune down their guitars and play 1-0-0-1 in 4/4.
It opens with the monster track "Combustion", sounding like it just fueled up its engines, and is ready to take us down the metal highway. The drums are a constant barrage, while the guitars and bass lay down harmonic riffs that sound like they should be sounding like dissonance. Moving on to tracks like "The Spiteful Snake" and "Pineal Gland Optics" have a bit of an older feel to them, like that of their older records where the riffs were slow and fat.
The track I wanna show off from this record is "Bleed", one of the more exhausting tracks I've ever tried to play on the bass, the precision is intense and you'll be left with bloody fingers if you try, so I advice you to just enjoy listening to it instead!
Bleed
All right, that's all folks! I hope you enjoyed todays edition of Alphabetical Order, a blog series where I write my opinions on parts of an artists discography. If you liked it or if you hate it, let me know! And if you wanna keep up to date, you can follow me. Until next time, peace out!
This was pretty much my realization too as I was trying to learn to play their tracks
