helterskelter.ca

MESHUGGAH
1995 - Destroy Erase Improve.
way more Helter Skelter.

May 12, 1995 - 2025: 30 years of: Destroy Erase Improve.

The future was here in 1995.

The extremities of the 90s hit hard. Where the homogeneous 80s had few out-of-the-box players in the extreme-metal field, this new decade brought us loads of unexpected welcomed oddities: FEAR FACTORY, STRAPPING YOUNG LAD and from the far far far far left: MESHUGGAH !

1991's Contradictions Collapse debut-CD is a lethal unorthodox slab of metal, they now ultimately brings us to a higher manufacturing maturity. Future-deathrash: a fine mix of thrash and deathmetal-tones, top digital production, industrial flair and crazy rhythms ...and nothing says crazy like MESHUGGAH. Literally "meshuggah" is "crazy" in Yiddish.

This primal force is instantly felt on contact as "Future Breed Machine" kills without hesitation. Koloss riffing with a sick twist. Look beyond, it's not just the low-E or more precisely low-B string staccato start / stop motion and epileptic drums.

"Soul Burn" slowly land-slides in with it's off-set almost jazz drum-pattern and when the main-riff arrives everything is instantly ablazed when Jens Kidman screams "Buuuuuuurrrnnn !!!". The God-made piece "Vanished" mechanically dictates and like a type-writer, hammers you into submission, while the machine-gun riff of "Suffer In Truth" uses eardrums as a punching-bag for a full 4:20sec storm.

Cyber-deathrash, this is nitroglycerin-metal ....the soul of a new machine !

While 1990's Stockholm-bred ENTOMBED sat deathmetal on the map in this remote part of the globe, it was now time for the even more remote MESHUGGAH to stir the scene again. 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 in heavymetal's landscape.

Always on edge, the scene shall soon be sucked by the orbit of 1998's Chaosphere CD.

*
Transfixion = video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhGA6QXF7ZU
Terminal Illusions = video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o6Ucbib2WU
Destroy Erase Improve = full CD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP9412LFP0o&list=OLAK5uy_kB2Os9YLR18H_8mtbslyOzlnR--BL8Sdk
MTV interview in 1995
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i1Px0u11U0
Live in Sweden in 1996
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1cvj5YT6kI
some guys
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71ClDDw3AsA