Meshuggah – Obzen
Meshuggah “Obzen”, ahhh it just flows out so sweetly, well here we go, first of all i would like to say, kind of like a disclaimer that Meshuggah might be my all time favorite band, so please take that into consideration with the review to this piece of shit… wait… maybe I’m getting ahead of myself, i get this very strange vibe, just like with Tool‘s 10000 Days, that the hype did not help at all, well lets start from the beginning, Meshuggah hail from Sweden and play “normally” a form of metal i like to describe as math metal (just like there is math rock) even though i like to call it calc metal, but if you want a more precise category i would say progressive death/thrash metal (wikipedia decided to call this avant-garde metal or experimental metal, but well we all know wikipedia is apparently filled with a bunch of crack heads that think that editing a piece of text on a website makes it true, fuck them), and their new album is out and its called Obzen, we have previously reviewed their albums Nothing and Catch 33, so lets get into it, shall we.
Car Bomb – Centralia
Oh dear… this is one those albums thats hard as hell to review but oh so fun to listen to… if that doesn’t abode well for Car Bomb (nice name by the way… kinda appropriate) i don’t know what will, so Car Bomb is what i would call a Mathcore band, following the likes of The Dillinger Escape Plan and Psyopus… so lets have a look see.
Meshuggah – Nothing
Meshuggah are back! Well, not really. They just released «Nothing» again. So… Is it just another stupid re-release in digipack with a Japanese bonus track? No, this is a remastered version of «Nothing». Well, to be honest, remastered version do suck most of the times. Let’s see what about this one!
By Night – A New Shape of Desperation
By Night is one of the bands that I include in the Meshuggah wannabes pot [like Textures and, mostly, Coprofago]. They are in the pot, but not as deep as Textures and, surely, not in the same way as Coprofago [the Meshuggah clones]. Well, to be honest, they are barely in the pot, and that’s why I like them. They have Meshuggah influences, sure they do, but the overall is way beyond that. Maybe is their melodic side, I don’t know. There’s something in this guys that’s really special.
Coprofago – Unorthodox Creative Criteria
So I decided to review Coprofago latest work. My first contact with Coprofago was with the “Genesis” album. I didn’t like it at all. It was a major Meshuggah rip-off. I mean, even the vocals sound exactly like Jens Kidman. Not similar. Exactly the same. They had some ideas but 97% was all Meshuggah.
Don Caballero – World Class Listening Problem
A pleasure as always, yeah most of the time the shifting repetition under the transcendental drumming, from Che, does tend to give the illusion of self indulgence, however it …. got you people fooled for a moment there, hehhe, anyways i thought they were “dead” seems i was wrong and thank whatever god you pray to, Don Caballero plays math rock, what is math rock? you might say, well wikipedia says it better than i could. were math rocks is “characterised by complex, atypical rhythmic structures, stop/start dynamics and angular, dissonant riffs.” and i believe Don Caballero were (and as it seems continue to be) in the foremost of this genre.
Meshuggah – Catch Thirty-Three
I’m not going to lie, i’m a unconditional Meshuggah fan, even if they started making polka music i would still find wonderful things to say about their music, i’m exaggerating, or am i? well Meshuggah is hard to characterized, even more with time, i like to say they play Calc Metal (from calculus) but you can say they play mathcore (derived from math rock), anyway this characterization problems derives from their very characteristic sound, that use extended polymetric passages, complex drum patterns, odd time signatures, angular, dissonant guitar riffs, and harsh, atonal vocals.