MESHUGGAH — Immutable (review)

Album · 2022 · Progressive Metal

3.5/5 · 2022-04-01
siLLy puPPy

A product of the 1980s, Sweden’s MESHUGGAH may have started out as a mere Metallica clone but didn’t take long after its lackluster debut “Contradictions Collapse” to launch out into a new musical world of its own making. With the 1994 EP “None” MESHUGGAH single-handedly steered the world of thrash metal into what would be deemed djent, a knotty syncopated form of progressive metal that features angular melodies, dissonant chord stomps and polyrhythms on steroids sounding something like death metal in cahoots with math rock.

Having caught the world off guard with its violent new concoction of metal madness MESHUGGAH has sailed through the decades with one album after another showcasing its bizarre and surreal form of musical aggression abut hasn’t been heard from for six years. Following in the footsteps of 2016’s “The Violent Sleep of Reason,” longterm members guitarist Fredrik Thordendal and head screamer Jens Kidman are back the band’s tenth studio album IMMUTABLE which showcases yet another chapter of this unique band’s idiosyncratic approach to some of the most demanding metal music there is to be experienced.

It’s been almost twenty years now that the band has featured the same stable lineup since bassist Dick Lövgren joined ranks in 2004 therefore it’s fair to say that MESHUGGAH has become a well-oiled machine of metal in how it continues to craft variations on its crushing caustic technical workouts and with IMMUTABLE the band offers a slightly more refined and dare i say even accessible step with its progressively infused groovy djent metal. With 13 tracks including three instrumentals, IMMUTABLE is a lengthy beast of an album coming close to 67 minutes of MESHUGGAH madness that features all those classic musical traits and a few surprises.

It doesn’t take long for the band to offer something new as the mechanical atonalities of guitar stomps jackhammer their way into your consciousness and then without warning Jens Kidman eschews the screaming until your lungs fall out but rather offers a spoken word intro that slowly brings in the more familiar uncompromising technical workouts of the MESHUGGAH machine. With many of the tracks written by drummer Tomas Haake, IMMUTABLE features a thundering roar of crazy technical percussive gymnastics as the primary instrumentation that the guitars and bass find themselves performing circus acts around. To smooth things out there are plenty of ghostly atmospheric moments to act a touch of eeriness to the brutal crushing percussion-rich rampages. Only Thordendal seems to be missing from the songwriting credits as all the other members contributed.

For a 67-minute album MESHUGGAH has taken a huge risk by offering too much of a good thing (or bad for those who haven’t acquired a taste for this eclectic avant-metal) however the band cleverly inserts the 9 1/2 minute instrumental “They Move Below” which is probably the most accessible thing the band has ever released after its Metallica worship early years. This lengthy track pretty much jettisons the bizarre technicalities and syncopations from hell in order to craft an atmospheric grunge styled instrument that features melodic guitar counterpoints sailing away into the skies. Of course it’s followed by the business-as-usual furor of “Kaleidoscope” but curiously that is followed by yet another instrumental in the form of “Black Cathedral” but this lil shorty is more of an aggressive tribute to reverb and feedback.

As “I Am That Thirst” gets back to chugging duties the album continues in a familiar comfort zone before the album ends with the final instrumental “Past Tense,” another atmospheric chill out number that features clean guitars, slow tempos and absolutely no percussion to be heard. Overall MESHUGGAH has delivered another competent slice of djent infused avant-metal and are in no danger of burning out any time soon but having said that despite the small shifts away from their established stylistic approach, this is a MESHUGGAH album through and through and the album sort of fizzles out by the eighth track as the it all starts to sound as if it’s on auto-pilot. The instrumentals offer a respite from the otherwise frenetic pace of the album but as i suspected, a 67-minute album of this intensity is a lot to swallow. Basically those already indoctrinated into the cult will find plenty to love on IMMUTABLE but for all the haters out there, there is nothing on this one that will win you over. While MESSHUGAH has found new elements to stitch into its musical fabric, in the end IMMUTABLE sounds like just another MESHUGGAH album for most of its run.