Meshuggah: Ranking The Albums
They may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but if you are a fan of Meshuggah then it’s safe to say you LOVE Meshuggah. Ranking their albums is a challenge because their quality has been so consistent throughout their career - and in many cases the differentiators are only the smaller details such as the production and guitar tone, rather than a huge variance in song quality. What you do you think? Check out the Spotify playlist and have your say in the comments below!
Released between 1998’s ‘Chaosphere’ and 2002’s ‘Nothing’, ‘Rare Trax’ was Meshuggah clearing out the vault and presenting a range of old recordings and demos from their first 10 years as a band. As you would expect, it is a bit of a hodgepodge of ideas and certainly isn’t essential - but for completists it gives a fascinating insight into their evolution.
Opener ‘War’ is superb, and would have been worthy of a place on ‘Destroy Erase Improve’, but for the fact that it doesn’t feature all of Meshuggah’s members on the recording (it was made as a one-off song, with programmed drums). The crunchy, tightly-gated guitars of ‘By Emptyness Abducted’ would have sounded great on ‘Chaosphere’, and the thrashy punk of ‘Don’t Speak’ (sadly not a No Doubt cover…) sounds suitably unhinged.
Elsewhere, ‘Rare Trax’ presents demos, half-baked ideas and a slowed-down, groovy version of Chaosphere’s opener ‘Concatenation’. Intriguing, but definitely not where you should start with Meshuggah.
Standout Tracks: ‘War’, ‘By Emptyness Abducted’, ‘Don’t Speak’
The undisputed highlight of ‘The Violent Sleep of Reason’ is Tomas Haake’s drumming. Not only is his playing even more dextrous, loose and inventive than ever, but the drum sound is arguably the finest out of all Meshuggah’s albums. It was interesting that Tomas Haake was the most vocal band member in promotional interviews at the time, and he emphasised that everything was tracked live, not to a click like before, giving the record a more ‘organic’ feel.
Opener ‘Clockworks’ is superb - 7+ minutes of pummelling, technical metal, with an actual - whisper it - chord change in the chorus. It is one of Meshuggah’s most melodic moments, which admittedly isn’t really saying much (they haven’t exactly become Green Day), but it does stand out.
The rest of the record is impressive, but less memorable. Unfortunately, Meshuggah continued to mine the mid-paced, flabby parts that weighed ‘Koloss’ down. ‘By The Ton’, ‘Stifled’, ‘Nostrum’ and the title track all play around with different guitar textures and low-end brutality, but they are largely interchangeable, especially with Jens Kidman’s vocals feeling more one-note than on albums such as ‘Chaosphere’ and ‘Obzen’. ‘The Violent Sleep of Reason’ is solid, but inessential.
Standout Tracks: ‘Clockworks’, ‘Monstrocity’, ‘Born in Dissonance’
Considering Meshuggah are Swedish, it was curious that the cover art for their debut album depicted New York City. Their lyrics focused primarily on the downfall and recreation of Western civilisation (“Dethrone the impassive governments. No more of this dupery. Pollution of environment. Stop this now before it's too late” - ‘Paralyzing Ignorance’), so it made sense to pinpoint America as the main symbol of these ideas - but there is also a clear sense throughout the album of Meshuggah not yet finding their own true identity.
There is a clear Metallica influence in early Meshuggah, especially the ‘…And Justice For All’ era. ‘Contradictions Collapse’ has a ‘Justice’ vibe in the guitar and drum sound, and Jens Kidman’s voice has a James Hetfield-esque quality, sounding macho yet melodic.
It struggles to hold the listener’s attention for all 9 songs (13 on the re-release, which included the ‘None’ EP with the brilliant ‘Humiliative’), but ‘Contradictions Collapse’ is a fun, energetic listen which adept musicianship. Just remember: this record came out in 1991. The year of ‘Nevermind’ and ‘The Black Album’. When people describe Meshuggah as ‘pioneers’, this is why. It took more than 15 years for other metal (and eventually ‘djent’) bands to even attempt the polyrhythmic dexterity that Meshuggah showcased here.
Standout Tracks: ‘Erroneous Manipulation’, ‘Internal Evidence’, ‘Humiliative’
‘Koloss’ has some of Meshuggah’s finest individual tracks, including ‘Do Not Look Down’ which I would tend to play as the first track to someone who has never heard them before, ‘The Hurt That Finds You First’ which has an absolutely wild, exhilirating energy, and the ballsy ‘Demiurge’.
Unfortunately, as a whole record ‘Koloss’ is weighed down by too many mid-tempo tracks, including the frustrating and unadventurous openers ‘I Am Colossus’ and ‘The Demon’s Name Is Surveillance’, and the ponderous ‘Behind The Sun’. In fact, ‘Koloss’ would have featured much higher in this ranking if the tracklisting had been reshuffled, starting with ‘Swarm’ and ‘Do Not Look Down’, and if the slower songs had been either sped up or culled altogether.
All the components are here to make ‘Koloss’ the best Meshuggah album, including a unique, flatter but highly expressive mix. It is just a shame that the record was front-loaded with the less inspired tracks.
Standout tracks: ‘Do Not Look Down’, ‘Demiurge’, ‘The Hurt That Finds You First’
‘Future Breed Machine’, the opening track on ‘Destroy Erase Improve’, has a similar impact to ‘43% Burnt’ by The Dillinger Escape Plan. Both tracks have an iconic opening riff that is more rhythmic than melodic, and have the ability to completely floor an audience in seconds.
What also links these tracks is that they both go off on wild, unpredictable tangents, before circling back to the end the song with the same opening riff. ‘Future Breed Machine’ may be one of the best-known Meshuggah tracks, but half of the song is a meandering, almost jazzy deviation from the opening riff. And this sums up Meshuggah brilliantly - they have moments of carefully constructed, direct gut-punching riffs, but also they know how and when to go absolutely bonkers and bring the listener along for the ride.
By the time they released ‘Destroy Erase Improve’, Meshuggah had honed their polyrhythmic craft and were focusing more on rhythm than melody. That said, there is more of a melodic pitch to Jens Kidman’s vocals here compared to later albums, where he gradually became more monstrous / robotic (that’s a compliment, by the way!). The guitar solos also sound like actual guitar solos, rather than the atonal, seemingly random collection of notes that we tend to hear nowadays (again, that’s a compliment).
Considering that they were still in the early stages of making music, ‘Destroy Erase Improve’ is an accomplished record. It sounds a little raw, and there aren’t so many memorable tracks, but it is a fun, varied and thrashy listen.
Standout tracks: ‘Beneath’, ‘Soul Burn’, ‘Vanished’
The reception to the one-track EP ‘I’ was unanimously positive from critics and fans alike, leading Meshuggah to expand the concept further. The result, ‘Catch 33’ is a full-length album that is essentially one long song, albeit conveniently split into 13 tracks for the CD and streaming services.
A promo video was released for ‘Shed’, and the band has played certain segments from the record live (‘Mind’s Mirrors’, ‘In Death - Is Life’ and ‘In Death - Is Death’), but ‘Catch 33’ is generally best enjoyed by listening from start to finish in one sitting, rather than cherry-picking specific songs especially given that certain tracks are almost identical (‘Autonomy Lost’ and ‘Imprint of the Un-Saved’, for example).
‘Catch 33’ is a disorienting, unforgiving record that only really loses marks for the drums. Thomas Haake, for reasons unclear, programmed the drums rather than playing them live. It sounded great at the time, but over the last 20 years the more organic, analogue and ‘human’ drum sound in more recent albums ‘Immutable’ and ‘The Violent Sleep of Reason’ has shown that ‘Catch 33’ sounds somewhat artificial and ‘on the grid’ by comparison, especially in the cymbals.
Standout “tracks”: ‘Mind’s Mirrors’, ‘Disenchantment’, ‘In Death - Is Death’
It may be over 20 years old now, but ‘I’ still sounds as fresh, exhilarating and, well, confusing as it did in 2004. This one-song EP, 21 minutes in length, is a crazy ride through all that is Meshuggah. The band liked the concept so much that they went on to flesh out the ‘one song’ idea to a full-length record with ‘Catch 33’, and if you have 21 uninterrupted minutes to spare then you could do a lot worse than give ‘I’ a spin, followed by the superb, brooding and jazzy b-side ‘Pitch Black’.
The only downside to ‘I’ is that it has never been performed live. Apparently it was pieced together in the studio with no real regard for how it would translate to the stage, which is a shame - but as a studio-only artefact it is a multi-layered, immersive listen.
Standout tracks: ‘I’, ‘Pitch Black’
With ‘Immutable’, Meshuggah became bona-fide world-beaters. Their live shows were elevated to the next level, with incredibly intricate lighting accompanying tracks such as ‘Broken Cog’, with shades of Tool in their level of detail. The video budget was clearly increased too, with the promo video for ‘The Abysmal Eye’ reaching quality levels almost on a par with Marvel movies.
What is particularly striking about ‘Immutable’ is the HUGE production, especially the bass tone that sounds like it could level entire cities, and kick drums that shoot through the mix like machine gun fire.
As an album, it is a little too long; and even the most ardent Meshuggah fan would struggle to listen to the entire thing in one sitting. A couple of the mid-paced tracks towards the end (‘I Am That Thirst’ and ‘The Faultless’) could have been culled without damaging the end result. But overall, ‘Immutable’ remains a huge-sounding, cinematic triumph.
Standout tracks: ‘Broken Cog’, ‘Kaleidoscope’, ‘Light The Shortening Fuse’
Yes, ‘Bleed’ is a good song - but it is weird that this has somehow become Meshuggah’s ‘hit’, given that it is somewhat one-dimensional (albeit with an incredible, relentless kick drum that will blow the mind of any aspiring drummer). There are several tracks on ‘Obzen’ that are better, not least the magnificent opener ‘Combustion’, which has a rhythm so deceptively complex that entire YouTube videos exist trying to analyse what is the right way to listen to it.
‘Obzen’ seems to have been the point at which Meshuggah crossed over from being the band it was cool for ‘real’ metalheads to reference, to being the band that people genuinely enjoyed listening to. They didn’t really do anything differently, other than continue to hone their craft - so perhaps it is more a case of the rest of the world catching up.
Standout Tracks: ‘Combustion’, ‘Lethargica’, ‘Pineal Gland Optics’
Feral, ferocious and furious - and that’s just the opener ‘Concatenation’.
‘Chaosphere’ has a wild, unhinged energy throughout, and Jens Kidman sings in a looser way here than anywhere else. Just listen the ‘Ha ha’ he incorporates at 4 minutes into the almost-rapped ‘Neurotica’ - he sounds like a man possessed.
The production in the remastered 2023 version of ‘Chaosphere’ is absolutely stunning. The original sounded superb, reminiscent of Fear Factory’s ‘Obsolete’, but the re-released version took it to the next level and reinforces just how cutting-edge Meshuggah were in the late 90s. Taking the raw aggression of the faster parts from ‘Destroy Erase Improve’ and focusing them into a pummelling, brutal assualt, ‘Chaosphere’ is a pure adrenaline rush.
Standout tracks: ‘Corridor of Chameleons’, ‘Neurotica’, ‘Sane’
Top to bottom, ‘Nothing’ is arguably the ultimate showcase of Meshuggah’s best elements. It grooves, it bites, and it rocks. ‘Chaosphere’ was wild, and ‘Nothing’ was its more controlled follow-up. It may not be as frantic, but it is like being repeatedly hit over the head with a sledgehammer, in all the right ways.
The original 2002 version was amazing, but the re-recorded 2006 version is even better, with extra depth through the addition of 8-string guitars.
Introducing an uninitiated friend to Meshuggah? Start them on ‘Nothing’ and see if they either run for the hills or become obsessed. It may not take long to see which way they are going to go.
Standout tracks: ‘Perpetual Black Second’, ‘Straws Pulled At Random’, ‘Spasm’
