Their name was
Metallien when the band first saw day light, the founding fathers to the band left and then there was only one sole band member left and a few demos.
Fredrik Thordendal was left but he wanted to go on with the band, the band got a new name and now they are called
Meshuggah, this band was going to be one of metal’s most ‘’complicated’’ bands. Formed in Umeå, Sweden
Meshuggah was ready to take their place in the world of metal, with a complex unique mix between thrash-metal and various of other aggressive metal genres plus aggressive vocals the band was going to be one truly one-of-a-kind band.
Meshuggah created a new kind of metal music, this type of metal felt futuristic, very complex, very heavy and very interesting too compared to other heavy-metal bands in this world.
This album is called
Destroy Erase Improve, this album delivers both instrumental songs and normal songs with vocals. ‘’Experienced’’ metal heads or listeners already knows that this band plays very difficult music, but for those who haven’t heard about this band will be given a small description of the overall sound and music. We begin with the vocals, imagine
Pantera’s former singer
Phil Anselmo forged together with
Metallica’s singer
James Hetfield and you will have a small hint of how
Meshuggah’s singer will sound like. Aggressive and forceful grunting would be the best way to describe the vocals. The guitars in this album are great in this album; here you have brutal and heavy shredding, calm melodic acoustics and mysterious and haunting lead guitars.
Meshuggah has always used complex and very chunky guitar riffs, this album has a bit less complexity and more ‘’standard’’ riffs. This type of guitar work is though catchy and enjoying, you can even do some head banging while listen to this, there are not good-flowing music but it is still heavy and catchy. If you compare this album to
Contradictions Collapse you can notice in this album that the bass is not as clear and brutally audible. Back then the bass was even more audible than the guitar work which was a huge plus if you ask me, this time the bass and guitars are basically equally balanced. This is a good thing though because I think that some people don’t want to have one stronger instrument over one weak instrument, the bass is audible and it does a great job to create this massive wall of sound alongside the guitars. Most instruments are difficult and quite complex and so is the drumming, all drum patterns are heavy and complicated, there are no ‘’good-flowing’’ patterns so don’t expect this to be a fast and catchy album. You can notice that thrash-metal is forged in the drum patterns but the paces are always changing, most songs do not have one single pattern, the drums are always shifting to other tempos and rhythms.
My first
Meshuggah experience first began when I downloaded some songs from them, I just saw this crazy band name so I wanted to check them out. But when I got the songs I was quite disappointed because I thought that their music was to strange and extreme, but with time I changed my mind and I gave
Meshuggah a second change. Now I think that this is a good metal band and this album was a really good album but not an awesome one. The things I liked about this album were the complex and heavy overall material and the balance between the guitars and bass, I also liked the calm instrumental and melodic song which was included in this album. Their music is very interesting once you have gone used to it, people who are unfamiliar to
Meshuggah may find this type of music a bit strange but it takes time to like these guys, it took me years before I wanted to know more about them. Anyway, the overall material is very heavy and sometimes catchy; all instruments are well-balanced so no other instrument is to weak or too overwhelming. This album also gives the listener a break in all the chaos with the instrumental song, this was a great ‘’break’’ which makes the listener more interested rather than bored. This band shows great musicianship but there are still two things I don’t like about this album, the guitar solos and drum work. I personally don’t like the solos because they just sounds so wierd, the EQ does not make a good sound together with the rest of the overall music performance. The drums are though better than the guitar solos but I don’t like these ‘’un-flowing’’ patterns, most songs are catchy but you don’t get many moments to do some serious headbanging. But this is some factors that makes
Meshuggah so unique, this is also a matter of personal taste as well.
I hope this was a good time reading and I hope this wasn’t too boring, this was my opinion of this album. I think that this was one of the band’s better albums, I think that this is a unique band, it is really a one-of-a-kind band. Fans to this band should have this album and I also think that other metal heads could check this one out. If you like extreme-metal you would probably like this, get yourself a
Meshuggah album and your metal collection will be given a whole new look. This sort of metal is though very common these days but I think that this was the band who started this kind of metal music. My personal favourites songs of this album are
Future Breed Machine,
Acrid Placidity and
Suffer In Truth. My overall rating for this album will be a:
4/5
