Obzen Reviews

• Music and lyrics ( emphatically not starring Drew Barrymore )

  
  By AEHLNA6Z00J2Q on 2008-03-13
  Let me just say this straight away: You MUST listen to this album while following the lyrics.
  
  The first time I played Obzen in my car yesterday, I was bitterly disappointed. Most of the reviewers are touting this album as a return to classic Meshuggah, and they like it for that reason. It's as if Meshuggah is coasting on their reputation, like old folks in a rest home who occasionally break out a vaudeville routine they perfected back in '34. You know, like the Rolling Stones. That's how I heard it as well, at first -- as Chaosphere II. By the time it stopped playing I was so sick of the "BA-Daaaaa, BA-Da-BEE-Da BA-DAAA" licks that I was ready to come on here and write a two-star review saying that not only does this album suck, but that it ruined Chaosphere retroactively for me as well.
  
  A little birdie told me "Don't. Sleep on it." That I did, and today, playing it in my room and following along with the lyrics, this mother began to blossom and open out. I don't just mean Obzen grew on me. I mean, it's as if I was listening to two completely different albums from one day to the next. Obzen is no retread, but another push forward. Every Meshuggah album has a "hook," some radical innovation within the limitations they prescribe for themselves. Here it is the way the music responds to and interacts with the words, stanza by stanza, and sometimes line by line, almost like a gruelling opera. Where a song on Chaosphere is structured entirely around the music, in such a way that it eventually leads to a rhythmic shift that makes it feel like a trapdoor is opening under your feet, giving you a sick, nauseous vertigo, and the words are only means to this end, here it is the exact opposite -- Tomas Haake's lyrics generate the musical material. You can see just by cracking the lyric sheet how much more pared-down and simple they are.
  
  This means Obzen is more filigreed, more dense, more micro-detailed, less about one grand effect per song and more about constant change with a cumulative impact. A concept album about the human mind closing under the extreme pressure of lies and confusion and "seeing the light" of the New Age, Kabbalah, Buddhism, whatever -- the title seems to be a combination of "oblivion" and "Zen" -- Obzen's subject matter is also slightly different than older albums which are more about nihilistic philosophies of becoming a la Nietzsche or Deleuze and Guattari. But this bodysnatching New Age theme is scarier because it is happening to everyone, it isn't something that hopeless graduate students do to themselves. Even without the help of the lyrics one of the first things you'll notice on this album is the trippy Oriental guitar lick that sounds like a koto, that I call the "hidden tune" of Obzen, after the line in "Dancers to a Discordant System": "Listen to the hidden tune / The essence of lies in notes defined." This hidden tune is first played in dead space in "Electric Red" at 4:04, returns in "Bleed," this time as part of the musical fabric, at 3:38, and then insinuates itself into the DNA of an entire song: "Pineal Gland Optics," where the illusion fully takes hold, "A Judas syndrome in effect, former self the deceiver," Jens Kidman shrieks as his reason is flipped upside down.
  
  The rest of the album tells the story of how this madness seduces the protagonist of Obzen, through a very subtle sort of word-painting. The twin guitar attack of the opening 20 seconds of "Bleed" sounds like an infrared beam sweeping a room, so when Kidman enters with "Beams of fire sweep through my head" we can subconsciously relate. The entirety of "Electric Red" is an accumulation of effects that all gather together at the line "the scarlet flood inundates our powerless thoughts" -- the song itself is like a flood of gathering momentum. "Lethargica" lives up to its title as the most sluggish, lumbering track on the album. "This Spiteful Snake" is the best example of what I'm talking about, beyond the obvious serpentine riff that kicks it off. At the line "Trapping us in its winding / Its closing malignant cycles" Haake whacks his cymbals to evoke a vicious rattler. When Kidman says, "Overcome, defeated" you can hear the music break down and lose confidence. At 3:16 we get a solo that sounds like a snake-charmer's flute, right before the sinister and triumphant re-entry, at 4:15, of the hidden tune. This bleeds right into "Pineal Gland Optics," which, as I've already said, is the pivotal point of the album where the hidden tune reveals its true face, no longer hiding. Lucifer -- who else did you think was behind this? -- has emerged from the shadows to be worshipped by his new world of dumbed-down freaks, in all his alien, twisted ugliness, without the need for stand-ins or proxies.
  
  Obzen closes with the ten-minute epic "Dancers to a Discordant System" a controlled evocation of worldwide chaos that leaves you depleted and shaking. And I haven't even mentioned the two "simple" songs, "Combustion" and the title track. The latter is the most brutal song on the album but also, because of its simplicity, the most restful. You don't have to stretch yourself contemplating its Gothic architecture. Like the music of Merzbow, it is both violent and soothing, making me imagine those "elegant" human sacrifices in Logan's Run where people float up into the air to be zapped to the approval of a degraded, brainwashed mob who think they're watching art. Civilized murder -- peaceful slaughter -- no resistance, not even mentally -- "Obzen."
  
  I don't know how Meshuggah do it. How is it possible to express all this in music, and not only that, but express it within the self-imposed straitjacket of their timeworn formula, their classic sound, that dreaded "Ba-Da Bee-Da"? Is Ba-Da Bee-Da the DNA of music, can it be called into service to express anything? It's starting to seem that way. So I must beg to differ with the other long-winded reviewer: Obzen IS Meshuggah's crowning achievement, at least until next time.
  
  
  
  

• Tranquility Created By Raging Turbulence

  
  By A3I0UPD4L92TJZ on 2008-03-11
  Somerset Maugham once wrote that there are two kinds of artists in the world. One type of artist will create something with their emotions poured out. Another type of artist creates a piece of art through using their brain. Swedish metallers Meshuggah are exactly that type of artist. It is this very reason that Meshuggah's status in metal is so divided. They do not swarm you through a gust of emotion. They attack you through a hollow barrage of multifaceted time signatures, complex lyrics, and no choruses whatsoever. After the 21 minute "I" and the 44 minute gargantuan "Catch 33", Meshuggah has returned with no mercy on their latest album, ObZen. Ladies and gentlemen, brace yourselves for what you are about to hear because you might not return.
  
  ObZen kicks off in the most unusual way. Meshuggah known for their technical prowess, start an album with a straight forward thrasher. At their listening party, the Meshuggah guys commented that they just wanted to play an old school 80's thrash song again. The first thing one might notice about this album is that it sounds like the guys really enjoyed making this album. Meshuggah has never been one to please the masses and ObZen is no different. The biggest selling point to ObZen is the amount of variety. "Combustion" and "Pineal Gland Optics" show a more organic thrash sound. Chaosphere fans will drool over the seven minute Bleed, the heavier than thou title track, and the frenzied "Pravus". In grand Nothing style, Meshuggah still knows how to hypnotize listeners with the apocalyptic jammers "Electric Red", "Lethargica", and "This Spiteful Snake". Each song really does stand out on it's own which even my favorite Meshuggah album (Nothing) probably couldn't claim.
  
  If there was one term Meshuggah fans were getting tired of, it was the Drumkit from Hell. Granted, Catch 33 was such a guitar dominated album that Tomas recording the drums might have been a waste of time. However, many people balked at the idea that such a talented musician could be omitted from an album. Fear no more, Tomas Haake returns to the forefront in grand style. Tomas once again proves that he is better than you. Never a band to shy away from thought provoking lyrics, ObZen's lyrical focus is based on a society finding harmony through chaos and destruction. Another madman that was held in check for Catch 33 is released. Jens Kidman delivers his greatest vocal performance yet. It is spellbinding to see such a lead vocalist in metal not wither away like some other prominent vocalists *coughTomArayacough*. At this point in his career, what is Fredrick Throndel incapable of doing at this point? He has transformed what it is to be a metal guitarist with jazzy solos and intricate rhythms. He and Mårten Hagström deliver the goods yet again with outros that are so amazing that one wished he or she could hear the end of the song first. However, I must say that ObZen might be the first Meshuggah album that I wasn't blown away by Fredrick solos. Maybe Marten's underlying rhythms are just more enjoyable this time around. Either way, the guys have once again shown why they should be the most divided to metal fans.
  
  ObZen isn't Meshuggah's crowning achievement, and it isn't going to change the way any person feels about Meshuggah. Fans of the older sound will be turned on by the more song by song structure of the album, but if you hate Meshuggah, chances are...you probably still won't like this one. ObZen is just a great album by a band that continues to release unique metal in a sometimes stale genre. I hope to hear some of the new material on the C U LaTour with Ministry this spring. After all, can't it be enough that this band has not produced something as horrid as Diabolus en Musica or St. Anger?
  
  P.S. As a Meshuggah fanboy, I must write that this is probably a 4 to 4.5 rating for the album. I used the 5 to overcompensate for the flood of 1 star reviews that are bound to show up. I wonder why people review bands and albums that they already know they'll hate...
  
  

• Meshuggah Tasting Course

  
  By A300AR4IM0KW21 on 2008-04-11
  Meshuggah have come a long way. From humble metal roots they have progressed through a miriad of sounds and styles, all the time pushing the borderline of metal, and becoming the most innovative and original band in the genre. So here is their sixth LP "Obzen" - a grand concept album on man's struggle in the modern day world of supposed religious and spiritual wellbeing (hence fusing the words obscene and zen). It's importantly the end of an experimental stage that produced the daring one-song-epics "I" and "Catch Thirty Three". According to the band themselves "Obzen" is their attempt to draw together their sound and various styles from past albums in order to create a balanced and eclectic new direction. This is certainly the case, as "Obzen" effortlessly merges the brutal thrash of "Destroy Erase Improve", the visceral riff-orientated "Chaosphere" and later downtempo grooves of "Nothing" and "Catch Thirty Three". It also sees drummer Tomas Haake back on the kit after his "drumkit from hell" programming on "Catch 33" and the "Nothing" re-release.
  
  I've read reviews arguing "Obzen" is simply a re-run of "Chaosphere", or that it owes most heavily to that album. I have to disagree with this, as I feel "Obzen" borrows equally from past releases. For one thing there's a deal more melody to the riffs here. Take for example the opening two riffs of "Combustion", the lead being extremely melodic for Meshuggah, sounding more similar to Tool at their heaviest. Compare this to the utter abrasive opening riff to "Concatenation" that lacks any hint of melody. "Bleed" and the title track would be the most "Chaosphere" sounding tracks for me, with the later fashioning the kind of riff breakdown that sprawled throughout "Chaosphere".
  
  "Obzen" is noticeably faster as a whole when compared to recent albums, being more on par with the energetic thrash of "Destroy Erase Improve". Moments of punishing speed are employed through most of the tracks, such as "Pineal Gland Optics" which opens with a flurry of intense drumming and machine-gun riffing. Vocals wise I would also draw parallels to "DEI" over other albums. They are slightly more forward in the mix when compared to "Nothing" or "Catch Thirty Three", and with these albums they are used more as rhythmic accents, often sacrificed for instrumental grooves. Like "DEI" the vocal sections are more extended, possibly as there are more lyrics per song.
  
  Where "Obzen" sounds best is when Meshuggah play with dynamics. Thordendal has always enjoyed his eerie atmospheric sections, but they have never sounded so perfectly quiet and brooding as here. "Lethargica" is downtempo Meshuggah at their most lethal, instantly recalling the best of "Nothing", it cuts to a sublime ambient breakdown that gives way to an absolute monolith of a riff. One of the heaviest breakdowns Meshuggah has ever carved out, and a highlight to the album. The epic closer "Dancers to a Discordant System" is my favorite track on "Obzen", opening with quiet guitar ambience it builds to a progressive metal run-through of all stages in Meshuggah's career. The song has it all - eerie atmospheres, pummeling thrash, breakdowns and a face-melting final riff that lumbers with immense groove. Utter perfection for the Meshuggah fan.
  
  It was a risk to attempt an album that can capture all various sounds and styles, but I feel "Obzen" does it with sophistication. The album never sounds jumbled or confused despite switching through such extreme dynamics and tempos. Meshuggah fans should certainly enjoy this, and those new to the band will get a concise taste of what Meshuggah is about.
  
  
  

• stellar

  
  By A6TU9HCTU9MMQ on 2008-03-31
  You know...it's amazing how one concert experience could turn a person into a huge fan of a band. This is what happened to me when I saw Meshuggah open for Tool a few years back...at the time when their album "Nothing" was released. After purchasing that cd, and listening to the whole thing...I knew for a fact I found a band that was special in their own right. Therefore I decided to buy all the albums Meshuggah had ever put out, even including their "True Human Design" EP and acquiring a burnt copy of "Self-Caged" (as it is terribly difficult to find)...and damn...I'm glad I did.
  
  Now we fast forward to the present, Meshuggah has put out yet another incredible album that simply defies categorization...ObZen. I cannot stress enough exactly how astounding Tomas Haake's skills are on the drums. Being a former drummer myself, it's very easy to just sit back and listen in near-disbelief...It's one thing to drum what I guess you would call "modern"...and yes actually on this album Tomas Haake does stray away a bit from the polyrhythmic patterns Meshuggah is well known for, but make no mistake, those patterns are still present.
  
  The second the first track "Combustion" began...I already knew I was in for a treat. It doesn't start out heavy at first, but after the tranquil guitar playing is done for a few seconds...BAM! A perfect opening song...I won't even bother describing it, just buy this album and see for yourself.
  
  The one track I was already familiar with was "Bleed", as I heard it before the album even came out...hardly a skippable track, and this is one of the songs where it actually has more of a conventional sound than all of that polyrhythmic stuff you would expect when you listen to these guys. Nonetheless, I feel so damn sorry for that bass drum...Tomas Haake beats against it relentlessly as if it insulted his mother.
  
  And yes I know that I keep mentioning Tomas Haake more than all the other members...but I firmly believe he is the backbone of the entire band. Extremely talented drummer...who writes incredible lyrics for Jens Kidman to scream out. On this album, he describes mankind as finding its zen between the obscure and the obscene, but it is not a concept album like "I" or "Catch-33" were. Here is a sample of the lyrics:
  
  (From the song "Combustion")
  
  No more ifs, no bias, no ambiguity
  No wondering whether this is it
  Clarity so brightly shining
  The image so painfully absolute
  
  I wish I could describe this album song by song, but I am terribly sorry...I really can't. You have to hear it to believe. For those who don't like Meshuggah...this album could very well change your mind, it is that good. If in fact it doesn't change your mind, I say walk away and never to listen to Meshuggah again.
  
  All in all...this is a superb contender for Album of the Year, but even if it doesnt win any awards, it won't change the fact that this a highpoint of Meshuggah's career. They are here to stay, and this album proves that.
  
  
  

• Why did NASA "lose" the moon-landing tapes?

  
  By A1VPRB1AT3NTFN on 2008-03-24
  You know you love a band that upon your second listen of their latest album you're already hankering for them to produce another project. I've had this feeling especially with Autechre's "Untilted" and Meshuggah's "Catch 33". Now the same goes for "ObZen" (not to mention "Quaristice" :-)).
  
  I had no idea as to the extent of Tomas Haake's artistic involvement in Meshuggah as a whole. Apparently he's written the entire lyrical content of the highly focused story of "ObZen" and conceived of its imagery as well; and in its imagery lies a multitude wrapped in a simple vision. That vision is of a cold and immense prison perimeter whose walls rise hopelessly high, whose angles are tyrannically pierced with overlooking sniper towers. The prison is shrouded in sickly and tiresome grey/blue overcast, and beyond its walls lie no sign of human life. In fact, the thick vacuum of silence conveyed by the freezing presence of the concrete architecture acts as a meaningful paradox against the antithetical thunder of the album in play. The bombastic, epiphanic, raging screams of the inner spirit is ultimately defenseless against the weight of the spiritually dead mass of outer environment that slowly and fully permeates its being.
  
  How can one not relate the theme of "ObZen" to the incurable illness of Western spiritual stasis? Have we not reached a point that we all find Zen in the Obscene (as I interpret)? That we define ourselves by the pain we readily inflict? Or perhaps, as reviewer AllOverWith perceives (READ HIS REVIEW), have we not reached a point of spirit-numbing Zen as to be blinded in Oblivion to the fallacious realities we are fed on a daily basis? Have we not been conditioned to reject the alternative suggestions of our pineal glands as mere symbolic, vaporous experiences? Isn't it true that the world has lost its ability to interpret its collective dream of humanity fulfilled? I guess so, for in Haake's own words "the human dream" has been "incinerated, devoured, decieved."
  
  In "ObZen," the bruising intensity of Meshuggah's terrific, brutal anvil bounce is definitively augmented by the terror of Haake's lyrics, a terror that lies in the immediate depiction of a person presently realizing his metamorphosis into a grotesquely robotized state. He simultaneously realizes his incarceration (the numbing of his assimilated will), which he allows with horrific, blissful submission, and finally sees the blunt image of his "evil splendor"--"no more ifs, no bias, no ambiguity...eyes dilated to grasp it all...every illusion of what we are fails...". Throughout the album he paints himself in nihilistic phrases. We are "obedient devices...puppets, finetuned submissive drones...gullibles" whose minds are "reviled [in] everlasting ignorance." We "atrophy," "succumb," "malfunction" under the imminence of a "terminating clockwork" of our "deletion" invited by our "mutinous" psyches. We accept our "lethargic" culture of death with "careless motion[s]" of slaughter by which we "flourish"; we are only half-awake to the reality of our existence, and thus fail to witness the tragedy of our "collapsing dreams." We reach the "state of perfection" in the title track, finding harmony in our "new belief system" defined by "filth...vomit...blood," ruled by the new God of "corruption, war and pain." Turn the page and a spy tower grunts threateningly, an echo throughout the inner darkness stuffed with eager, waiting bullets that have the silent power to "invisibly suppress" the wanderer in the midst of half-observant inmates. The "reality [of] terror," the "voracity of one single day" "asphyxiate[s]" us as the snake of our evil sheds its illusive, "smothering veil". The pineal gland, Descartes' "seat of the soul," awakens in the utter darkness of our horrible reality, confusing our distinction between past and present self, once blind and blissful, now aware and grotesque, refurbished with a "new set of eyes cleansed" by a "new belief." Our warped (Pravus) religion "arm[s] our mind[s]," now "toxic" and "flaunting," with "automatic...black, acidic bile" inspired into projection by our unquenchable "thirst" for depravity. Our new religion is realized: to "DISpirit," to feed off the lives of others, to raise "deceitful spawn" who will carry forth our cultural priorities into the blood-red roads of the future from which we will always look back to the "poisoned nails of history stung...," our destructive blades eternally "swung" in the image of our ancestors. There is finally no escape from "the essence of lies" in our "choreography refined" by "ignorance ever-amplified" in light of "questions unasked" by our "controllable herd," blind, robotized, "withering in toxicity," our only dumb goal but to "appease" the lords of the false comforts who feed us bloated portions of mind-lulling episodes of "discordant" shows. The pivotal vision is the Zen-vogued man, at once aware and stupefied, married to a prison balcony like a Greek sculpture devoted to Violent Illusion, dismembered by the death of his will and the reality of his sin.
  
  Upon first listen, I experienced the premature disappointment that AllOverWith expressed as the failure to be thrilled by Meshuggah's code of "BA-Daaaaa, BA-Da-BEE-Da BA-DAAA" licks that have come to define their polyrhythmic Metal. But I took his advice (thanks!) and have now listened to "ObZen" three times while following along with Haake's lyrics in the booklet (I don't recommend doing this in moving traffic--yikes!); it has made all the difference. While the complex power of Meshuggah's music unquestionably stands tall on its own, the visual absorption of what Kidman is actually screaming TRULY adds an inescapable, virulent layer to the whole sonic experience. In fact, I found that the music comes fully alive, an unmistakably full moon of controlled hysteria. And isn't AllOverWith's suggestion a true, blatant metaphor of "ObZen"'s message as a whole? Is not the more you understand directly correlated to the clarity in which you see and hear?
  
  Witness ObZen. When mankind breaches the prison walls of his falsely conceived realities, then the universe will really be born, emerged from the womb of galactic space to breathe its first real puff of conscious air, a bright new space speckled with our forms that have finally traded places with the inviting gap.
  
  
• "Clarity so brightly shining"
  By AVCRD98TH48RN on 2008-04-30
  Like many Meshuggah fans I felt they peaked with their fantastic EP "I" which epitomized everything they were working towards with their polyrhythmic Math Metal approach; and with their highly experimental follow-up album "Catch Thirty Three" I was sure their glory days were behind them. I was mistaken. With "Obzen" there is an amazing infusion of groove added to each and every track, seemlessly infusing this new direction with their already jaw-dropping, calculated Progressive Metal time signatures. Influences from bands like Tool and Mastodon come to mind frequently throughout this recording, the albums "Lateralus" and "Leviathan" most notably. The result is Meshuggah's best and certainly most memorable album yet. Each song sticks with power and precision all the while feeling like parts of brilliant machinery put together into one dynamic creation. Highly recommended.
  
  
• Sorry, I just don't get this one
  By A2OPRFPOZ46P66 on 2008-06-04
  I know I'm going to get a thrashing for this. I'm very open minded and have a wide array of musical interest. I don't care if it's indie or mass-market, I'll be as objective as possible. With that said, I've given this album 3 listens and while the guys have unmistakable talent, I just don't see what all the rage is about. What this album DID do for me is make me realize how amazing some of my other music is.. Becoming the Archetype, Neurosis, Opeth...
  
  If you like this band, this album will obviously keep you interested and as one reviewer said, you either love them or don't. I guess I'm in the latter.
  
  
• Dancers to a Cordant Metal
  By A2B9Y0WXNSN17U on 2008-03-24
  Meshuggah are not only masters of extremely dense and technical metal, they're one of the few acts in that category with some real personality and a sense of dynamics. Sure they would never touch unmanly things like melodies or feelings with a ten-foot drumstick, but Meshuggah's crushing displays of technical power actually sound like they were created by humans rather than robots. Meanwhile, occasional breakdowns and quiet passages (like in "Electric Red" and "Lethargica") make the heaviness seem even heavier. And while they surely deliver dark metal's typically brutal riffs and grim lyrics, Meshuggah's secret weapon is rhythm - especially as delivered by stupendous drummer Tomas Hakke, whose tightly controlled polyrhythmic attack makes him a million times heavier than your standard ADHD'ed nu-metal drum hack.
  
  This album might sound like a monotonous jackbooted deathmarch at first, but after many listens the songs start to differentiate themselves, as the technical workouts resolve into distinct grooves populated by surprisingly nuanced guitar solos and all sorts of bizarre but curiously swinging time signatures. Granted, the band does occasionally get stuck in their own technical chops and have to force their way back to reality, as can be heard in the abrupt and awkward conclusion to "This Spiteful Snake" and in a few other places on the album. But believe it or not, the groove's the thing, topping out in the neckbreaking "obZen" (the title track), in which the band actually swings as readily as it chops. This extreme technical metal is technically extreme and heavily fascinating. [~doomsdayer520~]
  
  
• Amazing Work of Art
  By A3KIYYOCEZ0T4I on 2008-03-11
  Again, Meshuggah has created an emotional, intellectual, progressive, blistering, heavy, thrashing, and enjoyable album. This is a return to more "typical" song writing forms. Highlights are the opening three tracks, with "Bleed" being a classic rocker with a touch of high art nostalgia from the last two releases.
  
  You will be satisfied.
  
  
• Continued greatness
  By A20LMIGSNYXBGF on 2008-03-11
  Obzen continues the greatness we have come to know and expect from one of metal's most talented bands. Featuring some bizarre cover art (Underneath the sleeve), Obzen definietly features music to match. The band sounds as tight and fresh as ever with more intricate riffs over Haake's mind boggling percussion skills, making this another amazing record to add to the long list for Meshuggah. The crushing downtuned riffs and incredibe rythmic interplay of Meshuggah really shines on this outing and will surely leave any naysayers speechless with its perfection.
  
  Production values are top notch as usual, drums sound crystal clear and hit hard while the guitars cut through the mix with blistering distortion. Standout tracks for me were Bleed, Lethargica, and This Spiteful Snake, but there really isn't a single bad track here. Obzen really isn't anything paticularly new or different for the band, if you weren't a fan before this one isn't going to change your mind. However it is still a rock solid collection of tunes with all the masterful musicianship you could ask for. All in all if you're viewing this album, you most likely know what I'm talking about when it comes to Meshuggah, so I'll simply say that this is just a great album that should be heard at all costs.
  
  
• Welcome back
  By A2LTL305X8YRBY on 2008-03-15
  After Catch 33, I wasn't really interested in hearing any new music from this band until I read about obZen. Nothing was, I felt, the start of a trend for this band. I dug the slower tempo stuff that they did, but then Catch 33 came out, and it just sounded dull to me. They put out a decent album, and then a boring one 3 years later. I understand experimentation, nobody wants to make the same album twice. 47 minutes and 25 seconds of music, and it's meant to be just one continuous soundtrack over 13 tracks? I was weaned on Destroy Erase Improve and Chaosphere, those two were their best for me. Then I read that they were returning to their more thrashy sound on obZen, that's what got me interested again. In no way did they abandon the slow tempo groove stuff, but they've picked up the pace and given the sound more bite this time. That tells me that they remembered what made Destroy Erase Improve and Chaosphere two of their best albums without rehashing anything. This album is a winner in my book.
  
  
• Godly!
  By A30LOH7J2O4G59 on 2008-03-22
  When played at certain volumes this album will cause Black Holes. If you call yourself a fan of metal then you should own this. Buy now!
  
  
• More Bizarre, Avant-Garde Nihilism From Meshuggah
  By AURX0OA5H0NVX on 2008-03-22
  Meshuggah is a band who people typically either love or hate, due to their signature abrasiveness, pummeling, detuned rhythmic intensity and complexity, and an avant-garde, dystopian and just plain weird aesthetic. All of which can be found in spades on their new release, "Obzen".
  
  If you are a Meshuggah fan, this is very solid stuff. I would describe this disc as an amalgamation of the experimentation and eerie vibe of "Catch-33" combined with the polyrhythmic intensity of "I" and "Nothing". All of the classic "Meshuggah-isms" are here- dark and distubring lyrics and artwork, bowel-loosening heaviness, and Thordendal's fusion-esque guitar solos and progressive structures. As usual, it's all a bit mind-numbing after about half an hour, but this is an excellent release for metalheads and mandatory for Mesh fans...definately one of the must-own metal releases of the year.
  
  
• Quite possibly their most outstanding release
  By A3VJH1DNJ8VEKC on 2008-03-23
  Well, Meshuggah has done it again. They've been my favorite act for some time now, but I never thought they could surpass their brutal Chaosphere album. After tons of listens to Obzen, I think they've surpassed it - and this is coming from someone who loves every last one of their releases.
  
  What makes this album so interesting is how distinctive each of its songs are. Every track has a feature that is unique and immediately identifiable. The songs themselves are incredibly dense, but some tracks are actually more accessible than in the past. Take Combustion, the album opener - it is very different than anything Meshuggah has done since, well, Contradictions Collapse. It is as straightforward as they come, but devastatingly heavy. Electric Red is the perfect contrast to this song, which features all the things that we've come to know and love from Meshuggah - parts of it towards the end are reminiscent of Thordenthal's Sol Niger Within album (and yes, this is a very, very good thing).
  
  I could write pages about each individual song, but there are some obvious highlights. The twisted, subtly changing but impossible to play rhythms from Bleed (possibly the greatest display of musical stamina in the history of metal). The absolutely skull-crushing opening of the title track. Pineal gland Optics' Chaosphere-esque breakdown 2 minutes into the song. The furious, pseudo-triple-meter, demonic dance of "Dancers to a Discordant System," and Thordenthal's guitar solo in it.
  
  And that's just the tip of the iceberg. If you want to hear some of the most crushingly heavy and rhythmically difficult music in metal history, you need to pick this album up. If you're a Meshuggah fan, doesn't matter what era or album you like the best - you'll find many things to like on Obzen. Get it and listen, now.
  
  
• Outstanding-they are back!
  By A3OA9ALZI2RNCG on 2008-07-23
  The best album since Nothing-good variety, not all the songs are similiar, which is a good thing-their talent shows here!
  
  
• Abject Savagery
  By A1D3QASCNY27X2 on 2008-07-25
  This is the only band I have heard since Metallica that I think has significantly advanced the metal genre.
  
  That statement probably pisses people off, but has anyone else made anything this fresh and effective?
  
  Tool, maybe. But, Tool was not a leap in intensity from Metallica.
  
  "Bleed" is the most savage song I have ever heard.
  
  Love it. This album should come with a Surgeon General's Warning.
  
  
• One of their best and most surreal outings
  By A3NM1I571IVU6 on 2008-07-25
  If you think DEI can't be topped than you might be wrong after popping in ObZen by Meshuggah. This surpasses all techincal limits the band ever faced. Now toiling in the chaotic realm of eight string guitars Meshuggah will allow you to enter the most abstract and surreal auditory landscapes with ObZen. I remember being out of my mind high listening to Chaosphere for the first time and finally accepting the unbridled mayhem that IS Meshuggah. I must not lie and admit upon first purchasing Chaosphere back in early '99 I was unable to understand the polyrythmic artistry and threw the album aside to dig into my Deftones records. Now I can say I listen to Meshuggah more than the Deftones and any other bands I have been into from the past. Meshuggah is not only for the metal heads when I saw them live their audience attracted a diverse lot people who probably weren't into extreme metal. If you want to check this band out for the first time ObZen is entry level yet advanced for any music listener. A standout track off this album which is almost the fastest song they've written is "Pravus", check it out I saw them play it live.
  
  
• This is very good!
  By A2HOCHRZ88H0ZI on 2008-03-11
  Best Meshuggah album in years...Well Even Catch 33 was awesome but this is like Chaosphere/DestroyEraseImprove GOOD! Buy it and be a good Metalhead. : )
  
  
• Monster!!!
  By A2230OSSDNASLC on 2008-03-12
  What can i say? What do i have to say? Help me....Help!
  Just by looking at the COVER ART, you should know what you will be getting yourself into!! People... listen to me, this music is no joke... has never been...pure work of art, pure sickness,100% pure talent, pure metal, well done, scarry yet beautiful. You will never ever hear anything like ObZen. Never....
  
  
• Revisiting the fork in the road.
  By A1YDDKJAJ85JKQ on 2008-03-14
  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.
  
  
• A few new tricks, and not much else
  By A2XLLLM322I4NY on 2008-03-15
  I know it's considered blasphemy to do anything other than worship Meshuggah. And yes, this is far better than 99% of other metal out there (which unfortunately, isn't saying a lot). But much of this album feels recycled. I don't care to go into every example, but take the last song for instance. It's cool until you realize that you heard the same thing on Chaosphere as "The Exquisite Machinery of Torture". When they're not rehashing old material, they're plodding along rather monotonously. No song on here has drive or direction like songs on Destroy Erase Improve. And their breaks aren't as fluid or developed as on Nothing.
  
  They could've done so much more with the music, but it seems they're more concerned with their sound. This recording features their clearest and heaviest sound yet. But the music on this album is nowhere near as interesting or captivating as their earlier work.
  
  
• Meshuggah out does them-selves yet again
  By A29OVQ7DLEGH3N on 2008-07-28
  This record it the most brutal thing i have ever heard in my life. Most reviews say it's a step backwards to Meshuggah's old sounds and they are kinda right, but more wrong lol. Let me explain, upon first listen it feels like Chaosphere or Destroy Erase Improve, but after each listen you realize this is the most interesting, challenging and heaviest record they have ever made. Imagine taking Destroy Erase Improve and multiplying it by Catch 33 and that's kinda what you have, but with a pinch of something new.
  
  Combustion and Pravus are the heaviest songs on the record, and the song Bleed makes my feet hurt just thinking about being able to keep up with the double bass of drummer Tomas Haake, who also provides all of the amazing lyrics to the record, "Ripples ascend to the surface of my eyes; their red pens drawing at random, at will; a myriad pain begotten in their wake; the bastard spawn of a mutinous self.
  
  Overall, this record is Meshuggah at their finest. Where in the past their music seems to attack you on three dimensions, Obzen adds a fourth. It may take a listen or two to grasp the full concept being that there is just so much happening at all times, but trust me, this record is worth it.
  
  
• Give it time - like you had to give NOTHING time.
  By A1VP6IJP6V4G8A on 2008-03-26
  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.
  
  
• what you call hell
  By A14ZYX70PNI8NP on 2008-03-27
  i call home ...(to quote Col T ) You,ll love or hate Meshuggah , it takes me a few listens to get each album , a bit like receiving music by code , but when you can decipher the maelstrom everything makes sense and you,ll find a kinda calm in the eye of the storm .. This takes me to a place thats isolated ,dark ,lonely and protected by a wall of sound ..peace at last
  
  
• Still Speechless
  By A5V9ZO86T8NJA on 2008-04-02
  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.
  
  
• Yet another great album from the masters
  By A3N5XIM9R2OQH0 on 2008-04-03
  Much like 2004's I EP, Obzen doesn't represent a huge stylistic leap for the masters of sinister technical metal so much as a refinement and synthesis of the work that came before. That said, this album ends up having almost as titanic an impact as classics like Chaosphere and Destroy Erase Improve, and that's saying something. To be perfectly honest, I haven't gotten too far into the album's lyrical content at this point, but as a purely sonic and visceral experience there's little out there that can top a Meshuggah release. Like everything that came before it, Obzen is precise, complex, and heavy, heavy, heavy (for an illustration, just take a listen to the title track, which is so crushingly efficient it wouldn't sound out of place on Chaosphere). While many of today's ostensibly extreme bands seem content just to flail wildly and land only glancing blows upon the listener's senses, that's not Meshuggah's game. In contrast, their sound is more comparable to a series of punches aimed directly into the solar plexus, driven by barbed-wire guitars and the uber-dense polyrhythms of drummer Tomas Haake, with Jens Kidman's emotionless howl and Fredrik Thordendal's spacey leads completing the dystopian, futuristic feel.
  
  As others have mentioned, the tracks on this album can be tough to distinguish at first, but Meshuggah's meticulous compositional style guarantees that the differences between individual numbers will reveal themselves over time. In Meshuggah's ultra-disciplined style, even the most seemingly minor dynamic or tempo change acquires a devastating effect, especially on deliberately-paced tunes like Electric Red and Lethargica. On the other side of the spectrum, the opening Combustion and Pineal Gland Optics are fast-paced, thrashy, and even rather catchy, almost managing to bring to mind a more mathematically inclined Slayer. For its part, the album's scary centerpiece, the seven-plus-minute Bleed, is an epic slab of sonic torment, easily one of the most awe-inspiring tracks in a catalogue that offers a lot of competition. It opens up in a fearsome lockstep, with a main riff as hypnotic as it is spine-cracking, before progressing through a series of punishing interludes, a surprisingly tuneful solo from Thordendal, and even a brief period of quiet, culminating in a rampaging finale that could set the heads of the dead a-banging.
  
  Overall, I'm not sure I'd put Obzen in the top tier of Meshuggah albums, as the last couple of tracks don't quite hold my attention, and very little can match the rush that came with hearing their early work for the first time. But even if Obzen isn't the band's best work, it still sees them exploring their own unique sonic territory and pushing boundaries most bands don't even seem to know exist. For listeners who share Meshuggah's odd sense of adventure, this album gets my unreserved recommendation. Five stars for most bands, four for Meshuggah.
  
  
  
• ObZen is a great album from one of metal's Top 5 bands.
  By A3DMEM3R1O5GCL on 2008-04-05
  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.
  
  
  
• skip this review...
  By A2MPMYR9QRX1XB on 2008-04-06
  i just wanted to voice my opinion that this cd freakin rocks! if you want details read the other reviews (or, you know, listen to the cd...)
  
  
• They're Back! A return to crazy time changes finally........
  By AWNVGGJEL9NZP on 2008-04-10
  Finally the band return to form and release probably their most consistant CD, ever. I love this CD and don't see it coming out of my CD changer for quite some time, or at least until the live Skinlab CD comes out at the end of the month!
  
  
• obZen
  By A1IMGPK239OA7D on 2008-05-21
  Obzen, an instant classic... nothing short of what we all come to expect from these machines. Production value is top notch as meshuggah took the recording process and producing their album into their own hands, once again. This just goes to show how talented and innovative these five individuals are. Everyone into heavy music could use a little a' this in there life. Released by nuclear blast, and still paving new territory in individualized textures, while retaining their very characterized, and now, very trademarked sound. The only thing I would have added (if they asked me...) would have been a more involved attempt to explore their more melodic, atmospheric tendencies. But they didn't ask me and I cannot complain either way, they are still all that is truly innovative metal today, and I have a feeling, for awhile...
  
  

• Inflikted
• The Formation of Damnation
• Sense of Purpose
• Death Magnetic
• Watershed