Meshuggah - Obzen
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Free Music Notes for Obzen
Free Music Review: ObZen is a great album from one of metal's Top 5 bands.
Hit: 5 Stars
ObZen ranks among Meshuggah's best work. It is of similar quality as None (EP), Destroy Erase Improve, and I (EP). Its overall sound is fairly similar to I and Catch Thirty Three, but its songs are more straightforward and accessible. It also sounds more like Tool and King Crimson than previous releases. The lead guitarist's solos and the "angular" rhythms are especially reminiscent of certain albums by King Crimson (i.e., Thrak, Red, The Power to Believe). As with previous Meshuggah albums, there are also elements that sound similar to Voivod, Godflesh, Helmet, and Ministry. One of the most enjoyable elements of this album is its dynamic mixture of light and heavy, soft and hard... yin and yang. Many of the world's best bands successfully combine intensity with serenity. Prime examples of this include Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, and, of course, Meshuggah.
ObZen is also a good starter album for those who have never previously listened to Meshuggah. It contains numerous similarities to previous albums but has the potential to appeal to a slightly broader audience. ObZen is experimental and technical enough to appeal to progressive metal snobs, but it is also accessible enough to attract the masses. This band deserves all the praise it gets, and it merits even greater popularity. ObZen may not procure the mass appeal it deserves, but maybe it will set the stage for Meshuggah's next album to dominate the world of metal.
Free Music Review: Still Speechless
Hit: 5 Stars
Meshuggah's previous two albums focused on the truly esoteric and avant garde. Where they had generated a new genre of music that came to be known as "math-metal" due to their use of complex and often indecipherable poly-rhythms primarily in Chaosphere in 1998, I, and then followed by 2006's Catch 33 took that from to a new level. The former presented a couple of tracks combined into tone long one. The latter took about 6 tracks and arbitrarily cut them up into 13. For Limewire music stealers, this had to be frustrating!
On obZen they go back to the form on Chaosphere, in terms of overall accessibility. However, they stay true to what they have done since then offering a mature sound. It is as if they have found their identity and are now presenting it to us in about as brutally cataclysmic form as they can muster. The music is simply mesmerizing. I am offering a track that I cannot stop playing. It is one of the more aggressive tracks on the album and clocks in at over 7 minutes.
Listen to the Allan Holdsworth-like chromaticism on the lead guitar lines (at about the 3:40 mark and then some). The eight string guitars combined with the dirty fuzzy bass and Tomas Haake's perfect sounding Sonors (I play Sonors so I am a bit biased) are impeccably produced. This is the best material Meshuggah has produce in an album format to date. Just when you think it all sounds the same, Meshuggah rescues heavy music again. They cannot be mimicked by anyone.
Free Music Review: Give it time - like you had to give NOTHING time.
Hit: 5 Stars
When I first heard OBZEN(the day it came out), I thought it was their first album that didn't have a character of it's own; I thought it was too much like their previous stuff. Now that I've been listening to it all month, I've completely flip-flopped my opinion and think it's their most perfect album. CHAOSPHERE was great, but it was desperately, frantically cold-hearted, whereas OBZEN is effortlessly cold-hearted. NOTHING(my favorite) was perfect, but much slower than CHAOSPHERE. OBZEN fits right between CHAOSPHERE and NOTHING speed-wise, which is just about perfect. It has a dash of CATCH-THIRTHYTHREE's avante-garde-ness, but just a dash. At first, newcomers might think all of Meshuggah's albums sound alike, but after a few weeks, they'll start to hear big differences. OBZEN is no different - the band has perfected themselves, not taken a step backwards. They've learned to subtly tweek their songs until they're as ugly(beautiful?) as they can be without losing intensity. Dissonant, harmoniously monotonous, and rhythmically ever-changing, this album is as anti-catchy as metal gets.
To be honest, I'll say that one song bugs me, but I won't say which because I know I'm nitpicking. Overall, I'll predict that in the long run, OBZEN will be a lot of fans' favorite Meshuggah album thus far. So if you hear it and think they're repeating themselves, give it time, and you'll wonder what you were thinking.
Free Music Review: Revisiting the fork in the road.
Hit: 5 Stars
There was a definite shift in focus between "Destroy Erase Improve" and "Chaosphere". The focus narrowed during "Nothing". While "I" included elements from all of their stylistic periods, "Catch 33" even further narrowed the focus on atmosphere and texture visited on "Nothing".
Now they bring us "obZen" which is not a disappointing record whatsoever. It's as if they returned to the period after "Chaosphere" and decided to travel in another direction. If any record was an influence on "obZen" it's easily "I". A good friend of mine coined it best, "It's as if they're a band again".
They have returned to a more traditional song writing structure (as if Meshuggah can be called traditional in any sense). They've crafted an album of songs rather than experiments in sound. This album is a culmination of what they've done before and proves they've mastered the techniques and ideas they were testing before. I won't recommend any particular album to newcomers because I feel all of Meshuggah's records are essential. You may have a better grasp of "obZen" when you've heard what came before.
Meshuggah's definitely an acquired taste, but no one even comes close to the technicality and brutality that they are capable of conveying when they're at their best. Who else has the nerve to DOWN-TUNE an 8-string guitar? There's nowhere else you'll hear a tone like theirs.
Free Music Review: Brutally Heavy!!!
Hit: 5 Stars
Well Meshuggah are back with a vengeance on Obzen, their latest release. The band has moved away from some of the atmospheric parts that were a little too abundant on Catch 33 and have written some downright brutal songs here. Fans of the Destroy Erase Improve and Chaosphere era will rejoice at the opening track Combustion, which is the fastest song in 13 yrs, the band has written. A thrash attack coupled with off tempo grooves to headbang to. I have to mention the song Bleed. This is simply the meanest song the band has ever written. The drumming has to be heard to be believed. Double bass throughout the cd that seems almost inhuman. This 7 min. epic is super heavy, has crushing grooves and has that machine like hate filled brutality that Meshuggah is best known for, but have strayed away from in the last few yrs. Pravus is another demonstatively heavy song that has odd signature time changes and is unrelentless. The entire cd is their heaviest since the I song/ep. Off course haters of the band or fans who are just too hyper critical will have a problem with this cd. The real truth is Meshuggah are back with a new cd that kinda brings back the old heavy/brutal stuff and combines it with some of the newer off kilter time changes the band has been doing recently. This cd is super heavy and will steamroll over entire cities!!