Meshuggah - ObZen
Nuclear Blast - NB1937-2 - 11 March 2008
By Paddy Walsh
Meshuggah may be coasting along in their own little niche nowadays, but let's face it - what a niche! With a multitude of copyists in their wake, yet none of them offering any real threat to the summit of their sizeable ultra-tech bizarro-thrash mountain, a new
Meshuggah release is always greeted with endless platitudes from critics and fans alike.
ObZen doesn't really tread any new ground
per se, but instead acts as a superb summation of the many head-spinning vistas they've frequented over the years, pinching elements from their entire catalogue, from the thrashy classic
Destroy Erase Improve, the slowed-down groove of
Nothing, the panic-stricken
I EP to the all-out head-fuckery of
Catch Thirty Three.
'Combustion', for instance, is as straightforward a
Meshuggah song as anyone could hope for these days, its opening riff nearly recalling
Tool before it blasts off into myriad rhythmic twists and turns, before climaxing in an ear-splitting solo amidst Tomas Haake's omnipresent drum abuse. The incredible 'Bleed' rumbles menacingly, raising the ghost of
Chaosphere but implementing the lessons learned from
I in the process, thudding mercilessly in a barrage of controlled pounding. 'Lethargica' is just that, and it could have easily found a home on
Nothing, creeping slothfully along and winding its tentacles around the ears. The proggy title-track seems almost structureless, but as always with
Meshuggah the chaos is tightly controlled by guitarists Thordenal and Hagstrom, as the band effortlessly switch tempos at whim. This may sound rather tantalising, but closer 'Dancers to a Discordant System' is
ObZen's major triumph, a 9 minute epic that is breathtaking in its scope, constantly heaving and swelling, Haake possibly flailing his drumsticks like a tribal robot, as Jens Kidman meanwhile rasps threateningly and screams manically throughout. The soaring refrain is the kind of effortless
piece de resitance that the likes of
Textures and
Gojira only wish they could pull off with such grace, and
Meshuggah do it with ease.
ObZen doesn't attempt to reinvent
Meshuggah, but it does an almost flawless job of reaffirming one's faith in a band who have consistently delivered the goods songwise, and for music this precise and technical, that is certainly no mean feat. At times
ObZen may come across as a little too comfortable, mainly because we've become accustomed to
Meshuggah constantly challenging us, be it with
Nothing's sudden de-tunement or
Catch Thirty Three's 40-minute, 1-track insanity.
ObZen is a consistent, thoroughly arse-kicking play on
Meshuggah's many strengths, and that should be all you need to know.
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