helterskelter.ca

MESHUGGAH
way more Helter Skelter.

May 12, 1995 - 2020: 25 years of: Destroy Erase Improve.

The future was then: now, here in 1995 !

The extreme-metal of the nineties hit hard, somewhat way harder then it's predecessor. Where the sometimes homogeneous 80s had few out-of-the-box players in the extreme-metal field, this new decade brought us a load of unexpected welcomed discoveries: MINISTRY, FEAR FACTORY, STRAPPING YOUNG LAD and from far far far far far left: MESHUGGAH !!!

Future-deathrash is a fine mix of thrashmetal, deathmetal tones, industrial flair, top digital production and crazy rhythms ...and nothing says crazy like MESHUGGAH. Literally "meshuggah" is "crazy" in Swedish, this is how pumped these boys are. While Stockholm's ENTOMBED put deathmetal on the map in this remote part of the globe, it was now time for the even more remote MESHUGGAH to stir things up again.

This primal brute force is instantly felt on contact, just like when PANTERA's Vulgar Display Of Power starts-up as "Future Breed Machine" kicks and kills without hesitation. Heavy, heavy, heavy riffing with a sick twist, all wrapped in a deathmetal-type production. Look beyond, it's not just the low-E, or more precisely low-B string action, it's the staccato start/stop motion and epileptic drums that sets MESHUGGAH in a breed of it's own ...a future breed of it's own.

"Soul Burn" slowly land-slides in with it's off-set almost jazz drum-pattern and when the main-riff arrives all is instantly ablazed then Jens Kidman screams "Buuuuuuuuurrrnnn !!!" at the top of his lungs. The God-made piece "Vanished" mechanically dictates and like a type-writer, hammers you into metal-submission. While the closing-track, the machine-gun riff of "Suffer In Truth" uses your eardrums as a punching-bag for a full 4:20sec metal-storm. Both bestial and brutally beautiful !

Future-deathrash on cyber-speed ...let's just label them: nitroglycerin-metal, as this is exactly what this opus is, mathematically precise, high-gain adrenalized guitars hyped by explosive rhythms. Guitar-players Fredrik Thordendal and Mårten Hagström have since become advocates for the 7 and then signature 8-string Ibanez Guitars. A then vision, a now standard, unusual for the 1995 heavymetal-landscape.

While their 1991 Contradictions Collapse debut-CD is a lethal slab of extreme-metal, the rapid evolution from the None EP to the Selfcaged EP of 1994 and early-95 respectively, ultimately brings us to the higher manufacturing maturity displayed on this new full-length face-melting record.

Unmatched musicianship: Destroy Erase Improve is next to none !

*
Transfixion = video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhGA6QXF7ZU
Future Breed Machine = video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1Dw98G04sM
Destroy Erase Improve = full CD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j2aC-fnPik&list=PLI7ve7lFMhIiqyXkGsN6uH-5LtaNBd1XK
Interview in 1995
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i1Px0u11U0
Live in 1996
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZCS1jFyZhE
some guys
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71ClDDw3AsA