Discog running a band whose bulk sound you have decided early on is not for you is surely only going to reinforce your opinion, rather than deeply engage with the band’s material as i would assume is the base intent of a discog run.. I might suggest picking an album and spending some time with it if you are truly curious about meshuggah and want to challenge yourself, or you can just listen to hours worth of music that isn’t hitting for you right now and hang out in a thread expressing your opinion about a brief experience you’ve had. I won’t stop you 😘

That's basically what I did when Obzen dropped, then I finally saw the light and I enjoy their whole discog now

I do listen to every album (at least) twice before proffering a rating, unless I totally and absolutely hate it (which are my 1.0s and 1.5s, typically), including each and every one of these Meshuggah albums. Whether it be music or film, I'm never a fan of the mindset that "I haven't liked any albums/movies by this artist/director yet, so I'll just skip the rest of their catalog," because while *yes* certain artists tend to carry a specific sound, it seems too presumptuous and judgmental to write off any portion of a disc/filmography based on the remaining albums/films. There are many artists, both directors and musicians, who have maybe one or two pieces of work that I absolutely adore, but can barely stand anything else. I'd have kicked myself were I to miss out on those gems because of the unfair pretense that I "probably" wouldn't like them.

I dunno. Different strokes, I guess. I'm not a fan of Nick Cave at all (respect him, just don't care for his music) but I absolutely love FROM HER TO ETERNITY. Similarly, the movie DRIVE is a decade favorite, but everything else Refn has done is absolute trash imo. Once I commit, I try to stick to it unless, like I said, the albums/movies are just so terrible that it's physically painful to continue. But that's not the case here, as my "2.0" rating implies that the work has plenty of merit and was either (1) boring/uninteresting, or (2) not very much to my personal tastes. I try to treat each album/movie as its own entity when evaluating it. But admittedly there are certain artists whose catalogs do not bode well for large amounts of consumption in such a small span of time. Maybe Meshuggah is one of them (for me). Same way I would never recommend anyone listen to the Swans discography back to back to back. (And I love 'em.)

Regarding the Djent stuff, that's just my lack of familiarity with the style I guess. Not trying to drum anything up. I see Meshuggah labeled all the time as "THE" djent band, so I assume the masses are correct and go with it until I'm proven wrong. What are ya gonna do?

And I'll certainly go back and relisten to the albums I *did* enjoy, which might open me up to revisiting the other albums again down the road. But it's not like I just whipped through these albums over the course of a single work day, slapped a rating on them, and moved on. I've been listening to Meshuggah for almost a week now. (The date at which my ratings pop up on Sputnik do not necessarily coincide with when I heard the album; when I do discog runs, I tend to listen to everything then rate them all at the end.)

Fair enough, i appreciate you sharing your process and it’s clear you went about exploring the music in a thorough and thoughtful way, so that’s my bad for assuming the level of depth. Glad some of it hits you at least, look forward to watching you become an avid fan ; )

Oh, and actually just to add, I would say my mislabeling of them as "djent" is not due to a shallow approach to Meshuggah specifically, but a lack of contextual comparison of what "true djent" is, I guess. Meaning, according to my database I've only listened to a very small handful of albums considered "djent" (per RYM's userbase) and, honestly, don't remember much of any of them except "Måsstaden Under Vatten" (because I listened to that one somewhat recently). So I have no real musical basis with which I labeled them "djent," I simply did so because everyone else seems to also do so lol.

I'll definitely be back to CONTRADICTIONS COLLAPSE, DESTORY ERASE IMPROVE, NOTHING, and I, if nothing else. (All 3.0-3.5s from me, and potential to increase of course, especially DEI and I.) And I will say that even spreading out a discog/catalog over the course of a week or more can lead to "fatigue" of a certain sound, so I do hope that should I revisit some of the other albums in the future, I might consider them more favorably.

I guess I wasn't too fond of the sound they took on with CATCH THIRTYTHREE and (imo) never really broke free from. That's obviously just a personal preference at this point, but there's a distinct shift between "I" and that album where things taper off a bit for me.

I really do love CC, though. Been listening to that one on repeat a few times. It's like the Metallica album I wish "And Justice for All" was... 😳

Album Rating: 4.5

the masses are usually wrong



before Obzen they were fuckin labeled as math metal, technical thrash, other pedantic genre names. they were on the money, but they’re pedantic yea.



then Neesha Namoor of Pedantery ran with it for marketing reasons and it worked cuz Sikth and Textures were considered metalcore. oh but once periphery starts playing dillinger escape plan groove riffs they’re another genre now?? nahhh b



that’s why Djent as a genre is stupid. it’s paid off for marketing reasons and to give a guitar tone and style of slamming strings a distinction. but yea Meshuggah isn’t metalcore and the whole talk is dumb without context.

Album Rating: 4.5

thing is it’s 13 years past since and it’s way too late



welcome to your hill djentlemen, the next step is the cliff

Ah, Sikth - good band.

Album Rating: 3.5

Mfs getting all deep into it. I'll just say I dig the band and the sounds they provide lol. That is all

Album Rating: 4.0

ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh idk how I feel about refusing to call meshuggah a djent band



if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it is prob a fucking duck lol



the pushback against it (though not so much here) always seemed to come from some elitist vantage point of not wanting to lump the mighty Meshuggah in with a bunch of pussy bands they don't like lol



and i don't think retroactively calling their "pre-djent era" albums djent is wrong either. these guys had a vastly unique style with barely anyone even close to them for so long... and now that others are doing it and it has a name yeah why not call it that now? and if were talking marketability, the term has prob benefitted meshuggah as much as anyone, being the undisputed creators of it... 30+ years in and they're at the height of their popularity, by far the most popular band of their style etc.

Album Rating: 3.5

tec is so articulate with his takes its remarkable

@alex no

@jay yes, he is an articulate boi : )

Album Rating: 3.5

seems like the folks not into calling them djent j dont like djent as a djenre term in djeneral

in my experience it's usually djent-heads that get kind of defensive about their genre being legitimate or not. and kind of wanting/needing meshuggah to be retroactively labelled as that in order for their world to make sense

i think inventing genre names is cool, it's all about scenes and context really why not create something new to describe a specific sound. but going back 30 years to apply a label to something that isn't related is beyond silly imo

Album Rating: 3.5

ya fair enough. i dont rlly mind them being retroactively labeled that way since they set a lot of the groundwork for what the style would be but i also dont rlly associate them w the other "djent" bands that follow so idrc lol



also wouldnt rlly call periphery metalcore and a lot of bands labeled as "djent" arent either (see tesseract)

Yeah like i think it would make sense for meshuggah to appear in the wiki for djent but not for them to be tagged specifically as djent. Just like it would make sense for Michael Jackson to be in a wiki for nu-disco but very silly for him to be tagged specifically as nu-disco

Album Rating: 4.5

I just hate that genre name so much I'll never even type it, BLEGH.

Album Rating: 3.0

dug this more than their last one that's for sure

Album Rating: 4.5

Trundle yes, that is the truth!