Meshuggah

obZen

Despite the crap album artwork, the latest effort of Swedish metal titans Meshuggah is a masterpiece. Followers of the band will know that the last the last 3 trips into the studio for Meshuggah (I, Catch 33 and Re-Nothing) have been experiments in harnessing the intensity that captivates their music, and is so evident on earlier albums such as Chaosphere, into a new, often more progressive, style. obZen feels like a summary of almost everything that Meshuggah have ever set to record (with the welcome exception of Contradictions Collapse) and there is no better summary they could provide than this.

Soul permeates through the initially mechanical production and execution of obZen and this helps to make it the easiest Meshuggah album to listen to. Catch 33 was mechanical and impersonal in it's very nature and it's a warming experience to hear a bit of the personality of Meshuggah creeping through the songs, the tongue in cheek hi-hat count-ins that litter opening track Combustion are a prime example of this. Pineal Gland Optics is Meshuggah at their most groove-ridden and it's difficult to suppress the feeling that everything is falling to pieces around you through the duration of the track. It's nearing the epic closer, Dancers to a Discordant System, and I need to concentrate on it so I'll finish this review now.

The presence of Meshuggah's trademark polyrhythmic groove is not lacking from the 9 tracks that make up obZen but it's mixed in with the slowly picked, clean, dissonant guitar playing that found it's medium in Mind's Mirrors on Catch 33. The furious, robotic vocals of Jens compliment the precise and technical nature of obZen to make it one of the best Meshuggah albums to date. [9]

Buy it here - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Obzen-Meshuggah/dp/B0012E6R3M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1204889491&sr=1-1