Review Summary: They are technically outstanding musicians, but weak songwriters.
Meshuggah. They don’t really need much explanation. They’re the ones that originated the djent sound while other bands, such as Periphery, popularize that sound. They’re a band that has influence so many other bands that Devin Townsend had to proclaim that we all rip off them. They’re one of the most beloved bands in metal.
They also made this unorganized mess, “I,” a twenty-one minute song that goes nowhere.
You see, making a twenty-one minute song is an extremely difficult thing to accomplish. Everything needs to flow together damn-near perfectly to keep people interested throughout the whole thing. The band’s songwriting has to be very good to pull it off. It’s not impossible. Bands such as Frost* and Mendel can pull off very impressive 20+ minute songs. They accomplish that by swinging the songs into unexpected directions, adding new ideas into the song as it goes along, and make them flow almost perfectly.
Meshuggah are good at pulling the song in unexpected directions, but there are definitely not good enough at making the song flow well and adding new ideas to it.
You see, Meshuggah has a problem with drawing out songs. Every riff here is draw out to a length that makes you beg for them to hurry up. It doesn’t help that the riffs are mostly comprise of the guitars chugging at odd time signatures. While this is technically impressive, it’s boring. Very boring. The bass generally plays the exact same thing as the rhythm guitarist and render pretty inaudible. When we reach the ambient moment, the guitarists are by themselves and played the same notes for most of it. The second ambient section I want to pay special attention to as the transition between the two riffs there at 14:43 is very awkward. It’s like they finish the song, but then went into completely different song. The flow there is broken almost immediately and was left wondering how they didn’t notice that.
The vocals are, in simple terms, terrible. His tone remains at the same exact tone throughout the whole thing. It’s monotonous to an extreme degree. He’s sort of like the Ben Stein of metal, always shouting in the same exact tone no matter what. The moment where he does something different is where he does this kinda whisper-yell voice, if that makes since. I appreciated that for the full minute it lasted before it went back to the same old yelling.
The drums really don’t do much. I mean, yeah, Haake is very proficient behind the kit, but it’s musically boring. He doesn’t do many different things through the song. He just uses the same beats and changes them up once every few minutes. It’s like AC/DC, only if the drummer decided to do polyrhythms instead. It also doesn’t help that the snare drums just seems off at points and wreck the groove of the song.
Is everything bad about this? Well, not really. For starters, Meshuggah strongest point in every album they do is the lyrics. They are generally awesome and completely kick-ass. Another thing is the fact that some of the grooves here actually work. They just go on for far too long. Also, that intro was entirely unnecessary. It’s like the intro to an album that leads to the next song, not the beginning of a song. The first two minutes could be cut out and not change the song at all.
So overall, is it bad? Yeah. The song goes nowhere, music is generally uninteresting, vocalist is boring, and the song is just generally a mess. But, they have very good lyrics and can get a serious groove going that slightly redeems the song a little. It’s just that the groove is wreck a lot by not very good transitions and the fact that they go on way too long. They are technically outstanding musicians, but weak songwriters.
