Meshuggah

Live at The Novo

Los Angeles, CA

October 19th, 2016

Review and photos by Travis Baumann

Meshuggah's name is taken from the Hebrew/Yiddish word meaning "crazy" and they are totally that. If I had to do a "license plate" review it would read TAF-HAH, in other words, Trippy as F#%k, Heavy as Hell.

I have heard the Metal press throw around words like "Math Metal" when discussing these guys but from a stand point of one who doesn't play and one who doesn't care for math, what does that mean to the listener?

For starters it means super intricate guitar work with each member doing something slightly different which builds these walls of sound but with polyrhythms and multiple melodies going on at once. So basically you are headbanging up and down while also shaking your head side to side and your arms are spazzing around when you listen to these guys.

Meshuggah hail from Sweden and have become world renown for pushing Metal to new boundaries by incorporating elements of Progressive Metal, Technical Death Metal, Avant-garde, and even Experimental Jazz in their song structures and playing styles.

At times it can come across like a huge wall of sound but then as you focus, you can hear each different instrument and artist playing their own layer in the powerful flood of music.

Meshuggah are Jens Kidman on lead vocals, Fredrik Thordendal on lead guitar, Tomas Haake on drums, Mårten Hagström on rhythm guitar, and Dick Lövgren on bass guitar. Fredrik and Mårten play special built 8 string guitars that are down tuned but also have two extra low strings so the whole band will at times sound like rumbling walls of bass.

Earlier this month Meshuggah released their latest album, "The Violent Sleep of Reason" on Nuclear Blast Records. In the past, I have seen Meshuggah open for other bands so I was looking forward to a head-lining set, hopefully with a nice spotlight on new material.

They opened the set with "Clockworks" which also opens the new album, and led directly into "Born in Dissonance" as it does in recorded form as well. Nice to start us off with the new material right away.

They played an old fan favorite with "Sane" off of "Chaosphere" and continued with more tracks from their back catalog with "Perpetual Black Second" and "Stengah" both off of the 2002 release, "Nothing".

Their previous album, "Koloss" came out in 2012 and I missed them on that tour so I was happy when they did "The Hurt that Finds You First" from that release.

I saw them on the "ObZen" tour when they opened for Ministry in 2008, and like that album a lot so appreciated "Lethargica" from that one. Giving us more "Koloss" material, they played "Do Not Look Down" next.

They switched back to new material with "Nostrum" and the title track from the new release, "Violent Sleep of Reason". The light show was as crazy as the music, with near convulsion-inducing strobes mixed with beam splitters and large focused beams being projected from behind the band out towards the audience. This created a chaotic visual experience that complimented the intense and layered aural forms.

They finished out the set with two more from "ObZen" in "Dancers to a Discordant System", and the awesome, "Bleed".

The audience started chanting "Meshuggah!" almost immediately after the stage went dark. After a short interval, the band returned and started off the encore with "Demiurge" from "Koloss".

The circle pit was extreme for the entire duration of the show, but picked up another notch of ferocity on this next one. Perhaps because they sensed it was the last song of the night, or it could be because the song came from their sophomore release and was a huge fan favorite, either way the crowd went nuts when they played "Future Breed Machine" from "Destroy Erase Improve".

It was an intense show, no one is quite like Meshuggah live. Very talented musicians doing something different from the other bands out there and it truly kicked ass.

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