I've not heard Meshuggah's music. What recordings should I start with?
Meshuggah is an experience, I swear it is capable of changing your brain chemistry. Sometimes it is a painful ride, sometimes cathartic, sometimes energizing but always...always intense.
Listen to Bleed from Obzen if you want to know what it is like to have an aneurysm...no joke, it's what the song is about and the first time I heard it I had no idea and felt like my brain was exploding. It seems repeditive at first but then it sinks in and you realize that it has subtle changes all throughout.
Pineal Glad Optics on the same album is probably my fav song by them. It starts off with this very slow and diliberate build until the song changes drastically and becomes the heaviest most fear infused track I've ever heard. If you want to know what it feels like to nearly loose your life, this song is the soundtrack to clinging on to what is most precious.
Combustion on Obzen will make you speed in your car if you are driving or run faster or lift more weight or .... I CAN NOT sit still when I hear it, period. When I saw them live a few months ago, when this song hit it was CHAOS! Mixed with the gnarliest light show in the biz, I thought I was seizuring and when I left the venue I felt taxed in a way that only seldom happens. I looked around and everyone was in a sort of daze after the show, like we were all shell shocked.
Catch-33 is really one big song if you ask me. The entire album has a reoccurring theme and if you play it front to back, it takes you on a journey. The highlight for me on this on is In Death is Life and then In Death is Death.
Rational Gaze and Straws Pulled At Random are highlights on the album Nothing. I prefer the "remastered" version of this album as the original just seems too high pitched and harsh.
On their newest album, Koloss, the songs Break Those Bones Whose..., and Demiurge are epic. Interestingly, one of the most crushing tracks isn't typical chugging. Of course I speak about The Last Vigil, listen to that after an intense moment of your life, whether it's a near death experience, a strenuous workout that drives you to vomiting or passing out, or after some other trauma and you WILL cry. I played that song in a dark room and I had no idea at the time where it came from but I burst into tears. Apparently, several losses of friends to war and cancer and a few close calls myself had built up and it came right out. While I'm no tough guy, crying isn't a typical response for me so it surprised me and I could not control it. Pent up emotion is bad for you, I like many in our modern sterile world have a tendency to disconnect from it. Meshuggah reconnects me with some of those base emotions that we all try and hide from.
The above are just a few of the highlights and experiances for me, I've left out much(like I or None) but if you seek these tunes out it should give you a pretty good idea of what Meshuggah is about. Like has been said, it might not be your cup of tea but if you take the time to let it sink in, it make you feel.
