Meshuggah
Destroy Erase Improve

Release Date: 1995 | Tracklist

Strange accidents befell the Meshuggah band members in the length of time between the release of the largely unremarkable Contradictions Collapse and the release of Destroy Erase Improve. First off, guitar wizard Frederik Thorendal severed a finger in an underreported and largely mysterious carpentry accident. But he wasn't the only member of Meshuggah to run into trouble with sharp things. Spectacular drummer Thomas Haake supposedly got his hand stuck in a blender, and injured it more than a little bit in the process. Needless to say, drummers and guitarists need use of their hands, and Meshuggah's challenging brand of music requires full dexterity in all ten fingers. Would these two mishaps derail the career of the band? Now, I should point out at this point that Meshuggah had done absolutely nothing remarkable in their career up to this point. Their only full length, Contradictions Collapse, was essentially Metallica worship with a sharper edge. Not only that, but their lineup was in turmoil, and it didn't look like they could hold a core of musicians together for any amount of time. All these factors amounted to one thing: absolutely no expectations for Destroy Erase Improve. They say it's easiest to perform when you're under no pressure. Meshuggah went about proving that fact on this album.

Destroy Erase Improve is the most accessible Meshuggah album, mainly because it maintains some semblance of traditional thrash/death metal. Because of its relative orthodoxy, Destroy Erase Improve is probably my least favorite Meshuggah LP. That's not meant to diminish it overmuch; I still greatly enjoy listening to this album, and it is still visionary and unique.

Meshuggah's sound is complex, intricate, and jealously guards its secrets. Believe me; this will take more then a few listens to digest. The only thing that is really palpable upon first listening to this album is a sense of almost suffocating heaviness; a feeling that I have so far found to be entirely unique to Meshuggah. Everything just seems so mechanical, precise, and brutal, and yet you have absolutely no idea what the music is trying to accomplish. It's like wandering lost and scared into the middle of a raging bloody battle, if you want a stupid metaphor for it. Yet further listens eventually unveil Meshuggah's true intentions. With all the talk about Meshuggah's inaccessibility, this album contains some of my favorite instrumental grooves ever. But these aren't your cheap, run of the mill 4/4 thrash grooves; these grooves are made up of complex, asymmetric parts. You wouldn't think that a 17/4 drum pattern and guitar riffs in 11/6 time could lock together into a headbanging groove, and yet they do. This is only one aspect of Meshuggah's genius.

As you could probably tell from the above description, Destroy Erase Improve is a very imposing album in terms of technicality. Meshuggah were really the first metal band to embrace jagged polyrhythms and utilize them to good effect, and this is the album where they pulled out all the stops. There are times on this album where the drummer keeps three different rhythms at once, and the guitars are almost never in time with the drums. Also, the lead singer barks out off timed vocals in a guttural, mechanical grunt that serve to make a rhythm all on their own. There are leads present on this album, but not in the traditional sense. The guitar leads are jazzy and ambient with a focus on sustained notes. When Thorendal does solo, it sounds like a jazz-fusion guitarist exploding; he plays unimaginably fast and precisely. Don't let the gameboy-like quality of his soloing offset you - these solos are the work of a genius.

There are numerous excellent songs on here, and I can't really pick a favorite. I suppose Future Breed Machine is the grooviest and most easily enjoyable, but it's not my favorite. Maybe Inside What's Within Behind is my favorite, with its almost anthemic atmosphere, and urgently rising riffs. I guess Soul Burn is the best song on here, with steadily metamorphosing grooves that utterly annihilate the listener with their infectiousness and complexity. Acrid Placidity is another good one. It's all clean guitars and uneasy ambience. I always imagine a desolate, wasted landscape when I hear that song - perhaps that's what they were going for? The only song I really don't get is Sublevels. There's a palpable lack of progression and movement in the song, and the whispered vocals fail to do anything for me. Meshuggah have made a habit of closing their albums with distant, obscure songs. I'm sure they have a purpose, because Meshuggah make purposeful songs - I just haven't uncovered that purpose yet.

One last note - the lyrics are stupendous. Dystopian, mechanical, yet undoubtedly poetic. Pick up a lyric sheet in order to decode them, because they're worth the effort.

In closing, Meshuggah's Destroy Erase Improve is a spectacular album in its own right. Despite this fact, I feel that a 4/5 is the acceptable rating for this album, because Meshuggah's other albums (especially I and Nothing) eclipse this in terms of creativity, originality, and quality.

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4.1 excellent

Rank: #80 for 1995