Review Summary: Stampede of the elfgiant
Meshuggah. You've heard of them, the Swedish tech/prog metallers that tune so low that they push the boundaries of the audible range. They are famed for their intricate polyrhythms, insane drumming and rumoured cannibalistic habits. The only possible reason that you would not have heard of them would be that you tried to hear them, but were killed by the primal force of trve brutality that entered through your ears and made your soul implode and die (ridiculous as it may sound, this has become known as
Meshuggah Syndrome, known sufferers of which include Dave Mustaine and Michael Akerfeldt). Meshuggah haven't really got anything to prove with this album, and it's is actually kinda pointless, since
Destroy Erase Improve, Chaosphere and Obzen are all obviously superior albums, and there's only so many songs that you can compose from dropped-Z chugging and oh-I-am-so-raw-and-brutal-and-take-myself-so-seriously vocals before you start to forget which Meshuggah album you're listening to. However, despite the fact, that the emergance of Periphery as a better djentcore band has made Meshuggah's existance unessecary (just kidding), they made Koloss.
I'll admit that Koloss was my first taste of Meshuggah, and I liked it not at all when I first heard it, so I turned the volume up until it was unrecognizable noise and then pretended that it was
Oasis. After that, I absolutely ******* loved it. The emotion behind this album is incredible, whilst the originality merits full marks. If you doubt the later statement, then let me convince you by my classic piece of advice: look at the artwork. The artwork displays a slightly runty/nerdy elf/gremlin sitting in a throne of snakes, holding a staff made of snakes with snakes at its feet. At first, you think "What is that puny elf doing on the front of a brutal, awesome Meshuggah album", but then you can hear the elf squeaking "No, **** you, I AM COLOSSUS", and it all becomes clear. With
Koloss, Meshuggah takes the side of the dominant underdog and explores the theme of the weak rising. The snakes represent the uncertain path that the elf/gremlin has taken to acheive the position of the Kolossus, so they could have been replaced with a throne made of sand, but that would not have been metal enough. With this revolutionary theme, Meshuggah have sparked a trend that modern culture will follow for decades; just watch any Disney film to see how much influence this album has already had.
Once I realized how great Koloss was, I took my iPod and spent a month meditating naked under a waterfall, listening to nothing but this album (still on a ridiculously high volume), and came to a decisive conclusion about it; it is totally worthless apart from approximately 11.415525% of it. That 11% goes by the name of
Dimiurge, and although it's a crap song (it's Meshuggah - duh), it is the perfect song to request from when you struggle to seduce a fit Swedish woman with. In that respect, the song is so outstanding that it earns the album 50/5, whilst the rest of it is so forgettable that it metits -45.5/5. I was so swept away by
Dimiurge that I was almost tempted to lower the volume so that I could actually hear it properly, but then I reminded myself that the massively loud sound that I was hearing might me making it deaf, but actually being able to listen properly would make me insane and give up on my life, so I decided to stay loud and remain happy in my ignorance.
Anyways,
Koloss is a great album if you like Dimiurge, trippy elves with snakes, Swedish women or very loud volumes. Otherwise, it kinda blows.
