Rating: 9.2

Country: Sweden

Release Date: 2004

Record Label: Nuclear Blast

Track list:
1. Autonomy Lost
2. Imprint of the Un-Saved
3. Disenchantment
4. The Paradoxical Spiral
5. Re-Inanimate
6. Entrapment
7. Mind's Mirrors
8. In Death - Is Life
9. In Death - Is Death
10. Shed
11. Personae Non Gratae
12. Dehumanization
13. Sum

Total playing time: 47:15

Band Website: Meshuggah

Meshuggah - Catch 33

Fredrik Thordendal - Guitar/bass/drum programming
Marten Hagstrom - Guitar/bass/drum programming
Jens Kidman - Vocals/guitar/bass/drum programming
Tomas Haake - Vocals/drum programming

This unique band continue to deny compromise, convention and expectation with relentless abandon, whilst keeping their impossibly brawny and acerbic sonics. Initially coming across as a weird experimental hybrid of the previous releases 'Nothing' and 'I', the biggest surprise is that the album becomes more infectious with time; both during its passage and over the listener's existence. The hypnotic, agitated and frugal nature of the music prior to "In Death" effectively builds a sense of foreboding without fatigue; what comes after is breathtaking and futuristic.

There is a paranormal tremolo picked motif that regularly arises from the backwash like ethereal helicopter blades. It lifts the trademark Meshuggah intro riff with its ever-evolving drums and liquid bass. It marks "The Paradoxical Spiral" with the colossal downtuned sustained bends and imploding structure. It follows Thordendal's atonal squeals of demise and precedes the total collapse into "Mind's Mirrors" and its vaporous vocoder driven citation. It rears its ugly head again under the massive imperious groove that initiates "In Death" and heralds a distinctive layered octave-leaping passage. For "Personae Non Gratae" the motif is matched to a significant increase in aggression and speed, with huge harmonised stabbing riffage. By this time the motif is smothered by overlapping polyrhythms and swirling effects that embrace a burning soundscape of grinding and rumbling inescapability amidst hyperactive vocals.

The key to the album's character is the diverse rate at which the listener is fed information and its context within the concept timeline. There is starvation manifested by ghostly clean guitar notes and there is gluttony as delivered by merciless crushing machine-like grooves that warp and distend in hysteresis loops. The feeding times are precision calculated to maximise emotivity, although it is a pity that hyperspeed Thordendal wizardry is not included. Only at the end, after a doomy epilogue of sublime melodic splendour, is a tranquil steady state of emptiness reached through lucid jazz-influenced catharsis. Complete with harmonised lead fragments like whalesong and a spine-chilling soundtrack to being lost in limbo ("In Death - is Death"), this eccentric and ambience-rich composition is something special.

August 29th, 2005