Monday, April 26, 2010

Music Monday #3

Contradictions Collapse by Meshuggah

----- tuesday, 4/20/10, 00:10

I'm not a metal kid.  I never have been a metal kid.  But I admire the precision with which metal is executed.  And it is executed.  You don't casually play metal.  You wood shed and learn your instrument backwards and forwards and sideways and in weird time signatures and over strange chord progressions and you drill until it's second nature and every hammer on and false harmonic squeal and blastbeat is executed to perfection.  That's what I admire most about metal.  In it's precision, there is a beauty and a frailty.  Because any misplaced note is anomalous to the whole. 

For the metal albums I review, it seems like it will be easier to focus on moments rather than songs on the whole.  Meshuggah for me equals odd time signatures... damn... the bridge in "Erroneous Manipulation" is ridiculous.  2:34... layers of guitars and drums and musical theory that I barely understand but I can feel it, imperceptibly.  Drummer Tomas Haake is indescribable.  It saddens me to think that people who categorize metal as "the same aggressive jock bullshit over and over again"... if that's all you think metal is... listen to the musicality coming out of the guitar solo at 3:44... dynamic, sparse, thematically transitioning until the song returns to the verse.  Meshuggah's instrumental breaks keep me coming back.

A huge part of metal for me is that I can zone out on lyrics and concentrate solely on music.  I'm most likely missing a huge part of the point by ignoring lyrics, but I'm okay with that.  I nod my head and air drum and lose myself in the inability to articulate but regain composure in the fact that it still makes me feel.

"Abnegating Cecity"... best song title ever.  Aggressive, more so than usual.  This is a "horse" song... a term I've coined for metal songs that follow a "gallop" rhythm.  BadaDUM badaDUM badaDUM badaDUM... There's plenty of group chanting on this album... I'm gonna have to google lyrics.  2:37... more polyrhythms.  I wonder how they hell they would keep track of all of this playing live.  3:07... impossibly complicated rhythms meshed with a quickened pace and a more urgent vocal yell.  This album has so many moments that take you out of straight forward and bring you back to a smooth head nodding in the groove I could almost choreograph a hip hop routine to this feeling...  The outro of this song is beyond description.  4/4 guitars (feels almost like 2/4 guitars) repeating a 4 chord theme with Tomas Haake octopus polyrhythms underneath... Oh, sweet multi-limbed genius-ness...

I'm so happy that I decided to review a metal album.  It's been a long time since I sat back and really listened.  There's a musicality to all of this aggression.  I would liken the poetry of metal to a mama elephant protecting its young by any means necessary.  Beautiful violent aggression for the sake of survival.  One thing that Meshuggah always accomplishes: under all the polyrhythmic impossibility there are still moments you can just sit back and nod your head to...  The dynamics of metal are unparalleled.  A lot of times there are upwards of 10-15 musical themes in one song, so you set them apart using dynamics, different strum patterns... Fredrik Thordendal's solos are so distinct and his guitar tone on this album is amazing. 

Half past midnight... I should so go to sleep...


----- wednesday, 4/21/10, 23:15

"Qualms of Reality"... Meshuggah is one of those bands that makes me think about math while I'm listening.  The time signature manipulation of this band is one of the reasons I love them so much.  I'm also realizing that it takes a certain mood for me to really be able to digest metal.  I'm not so much in the mood for that tonight so this may or may not be a fair time for me to be reviewing this album.  Another thing I admire with Meshuggah is that it never seems to be overkill when they're playing.  They're not trying to fit as many notes as possible into a finite space.  Their virtuosity and complication serves the songs and the genre.  And their dynamics proves this point.  They know when to go a mile a minute and when to take their time and flesh out a more musically subtle theme.  At 3:45 of "Qualms of Reality" is a perfect example of this.  A jazzier, neoclassical feel punctuates the straight ahead aggressive metal in this song.  Then when the driving blast beats return, it's that much more vicious, dripping with that much more animal aggression.

"We'll Never See the Day" might have my favorite metal intro ever.  And not because it's complicated or catchy, but because it builds so well.  It builds steadily with a medium tempo theme, then gradually builds into a more hyper pace.  If there was a "poppy" single of a song on this album, this would be it.  It's one of the more accessible songs, which means that it maintains the same tempo and time signature for more than 45 seconds.    But then at 2:45 it jumps into overdrive and begins to travel the normal Meshuggah time signature shuffle and Thordendal solo work.

And... that's enough metal for today...


monday, 4/26/10, 21:10

Soooooooo... I've learned two things over the last week:

1.  Metal albums are hard to review.  At least for me they are...  Or maybe I just need to be in the right mood...  Hmmmm...

2.  Vacations make reviewing albums difficult.  Especially if the album you're supposed to be reviewing is not particularly liked by the person you're on vacation with...

I'll squeeze in a couple more comments on "Contradictions Collapse"...  "Choirs of Devastation" is so schizo, it's amazing.  Mellow intro, followed by staccato double kick drum and eerie lyrical reading...  There are those polyrhythms again.  The guitar solo that begins at 2:16 is perfectly placed.  Once again, Meshuggah figures out how to squeeze notes in but not make it seem like overkill.  Then the return to the staccato theme... it's really, really haunting.  It reminds me of the latin chanting from "Event Horizon"...

"Cadaverous Mastication"... and the award for best song title goes to...  Tom intro... I'm pretty sure Tomas Haake also writes all of their lyrics, which is pretty impressive.  Drummer/ Lyricist... sweet.  Too bad I can't really understand anything sung on this entire album.  I did google the lyrics and they were semi-interesting from a metal standpoint.  Okay... I'm really just not in the mood for metal right now.  Which may or may not dictate future Music Monday review selections...

Fin...

1 comment:

  1. For a self-confessed non-metal fan you hit the nail on the head over and over in this hugely insightful post. I only wish more mainstream commentators on music could hear what you hear - or, perhaps, could listen as well as you do - even if they remain, in the end, a metal agnostic like you. Very impressive.

    As for Meshuggah, well, they're a world of their own, and as good a reason for living as any I've come across.

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