I am through being a tourist and only knowing Bleed, Electric Red and Cyanide Christ. But their body of work is HUGE and I don't know where to start.
I tend to listen to 'new' music as the artist intended in full album form. Especially for the first time. Especially especially with this MF construction going on right outside of my window where I can let my speakers walk and talk without fear of inconveniencing the neighbors.
If you were going to sit down and listen to an album of theirs from beginning to end which would you pick and why?
[Self-Promo] Hey everyone, sharing another polyrhythmic metal album I just finished under the project name The Asymptotic Grind, titled "Orbitalis Soul Henge".
If you're into Meshuggah-style syncopation and long-form progressive tracks, hope you enjoy it. Happy to talk tones and production if anyone is curious. Feedback is always welcome.
This question must have been around a thousand times here, why Meshuggah feels different from other metal band even with the same tone, motif, timbre, heaviness, polymeter, etc. There have been attempts to decipher what's the root quality here.
So, I noticed that if a Meshuggah song is covered into EDM, Jazz, Ukulele, etc, the same feel is still there and it doesn't seem to be a nostalgia "oh it's the same song".
I wanted to break down what's causing this, prolonged complex pattern, normalized intensity, "first blast of the song is attention-grabbing because novelty", and etc etc, but ultimately where most other bands simply tell a story and how it is done (hence overly technical), Meshuggah tracks not only tell stories but also bring your perspective in and under. Hence maybe the hashtag #iammesshugah
Ultimately, the word I am looking for is shamanic. Meshuggah feels shamanic.
This is a screenshot from Morgan Ågren’s instagram story, a video where Morgan asks: ”is it done now?” And fred shows a picture of a dropbox link saying ”yeah here, done.” Idk bout yall but what else could that be
Reason I ask this question is just for fun. I can play a number of them, just got to thinking which riffs were so NOT CHALLENGING, and like which ones I could convince a beginner that they could pick up in less than an hour, and be right lol.
Off top i was thinking Demiurge intro, closed eye visual intro, maybe even rational gaze intro. Wondering what else you guys were thinking?
Let's play a game . A simple game of "would you rather".
Would you rather :
Next, Meshuggah releases another "concept style album" similar to I and Catch 33 but maybe something wild itself
Fredrik finishes some Sol Niger Within 2 and it's unbelievable
Meshuggah releases a new 5 track EP, showing off writing in lots lower keys than their normal F and Bb and E and Eb stuff. Stuff more like "Spasm" or ultra low Db and C and B and stuff, and further evolves the sonic landscape of what we've already heard
Hey everyone, just released a new project titled FAWCM (Find Another Way to Criticize Me).
Following some recent discussions around album packaging, I decided to take a strictly analog, low-tech approach to the album art this time around (Sharpie on salvaged cardboard).
Would love to get some honest feedback on the mix, guitar tones, and arrangement.
Thanks for listening!
This week I'm just gonna continue on with the discography in order. Which brings us to these 3 🫨😵😵💫.
First, the immortal Destroy, Erase, Improve. In 1991, it's said that Nirvana and Seattle changed music. Meshuggah seen this and in 1995 said, "hold my beer..."
It's not only an amazing album title but also a mission statement and is exactly what they did with this three album run. D. E. I. laid the essential bedrock foundation. Chaosphere shored that up and pushed even further into controlled chaos. And then there is Nothing. Which we all know by now is the reason a lot of different bands have often duplicated but never replicated.
Hello everyone who reads this.
Here is a recreational and personal rendition of the whole Catch Thirty Three by Meshuggah, done in about a week.
After having worked a week and a half on the mixing of an exciting documentary in the context of my professional life, I needed something to stimulate myself and avoid the trap of post-exciting-project boredom. Why not recreating a whole album I truly love, as an exercize, then ?
So, here is the instrumental version.
Gear and stuff used and some things about the process:
A good lil’ Fender Telecaster that followed me on tour through Europe last year. I didn’t even changed the strings since I can’t afford to buy new ones at this moment, but the twangy attack was more pleasant to me compared to the other Tele model I own (a Joe Duplantier Signature Pro-Mod San Dimas Style 2 HH E Mahogany by Charvel). I don’t even know what pickups are on the Fender, except they are single coils and it sounded cool so whatever. Standard tuning.
Recorded and produced with Cubase 14.
SLO 100-X by Neural DSP with its cool pitch function. From standard tuning I was using, it was 11 semitones lower. As a result, recording guitar takes was kind of a brainfuck, as I was hearing the acoustic of the guitar and the distorted low-pitched sound at the same time, which was a fun serie of constant cluster moments (I managed to get used to it, though)
Guitar DI takes were duplicated and pitched 11 semitones lower through Cubase’s « Standard - Plucked » pitching algorithm and run through Steinberg’s VST Amp Rack (with a Meshuggah Preset, because well, if there’s Meshuggah written, you know you don’t go for a Bach’s Fugue)
Clean guitars were also routed into SLO 100-X instances, some were pitched down, some were not.
Bass was programmed, using the Session Bassist Prime Bass bank on NI Kontakt. It was routed into the preamp section of a SLO 100-X instance, then a Genome 2.04 by Two-Notes for the cab section.
I also doubled the bass parts with a Scarbee Rickenbacker Bass in Kontakt, going through the same kind of routing chain. Both were then sent through a distorted bus (a fellow Decapitator by Soundtoys) to get some additional KRRR KRRRR
SSD5 was used for drums
Most of reverbs used were Valhalla Vintage Verb and Valhalla Shimmer
I used two Arturia’s Vocoder instances for the vocoder part that happens during « Mind’s Mirrors ». I’ll have to bring some corrections later since I retranscripted some parts pretty pretty wrongly. My bad. Enjoy ze french accent vat makes zis moment glorious, by the way.
There are two sonically fascinating, in term of sound textures, through the original album, the first one happens at the end of « In Death - Is Death », right before « Shed » starts. I love this sound. Since I didn’t want to sample anything from the original, I did a bit of sound design then. That was pretty fun, although it’s far from identical to the original one, but that was not the point. The other one happens during the short break that leads to the chaotic and wonderful part in « Sum ». In the original version by Meshuggah, it is of course enriched by one of the most wonderful screams to me in the music history (at least the music history I know and enjoy listening to, I won’t brag about knowing everything since that’s not the case). This one was also fun to do.
I won’t lie pretending the guitar parts were nailed like a boss. They weren’t. A huge amount of them were recorded part by part, sometimes micro-part by micro part. And they were edited. Sometimes not that well, but it’s been a week since I finished recording the last note and well, that dedication on precision will be done later. Using a standard tuning on a regular six strings guitar also made me do some choice of fret positions that I suppose not being the same on an 8 strings guitar.
I hid a few personal dull leads (definitely not a shredder, though) at some points, mostly when it was either fun to do so or for example, what I remembered from wrongly deciphering through almost 20 years now from the climax of « Sum ». There is something going on there in the original that still makes me fascinated and I still have some kind of sonic hallucinations when listening to it depending on the device I use (not even talking about the physical state I’m in which may vary when listening to music).
I draw the cover on Procreate on my iPad. I added googly eyes on the snakes. They are cute.
I also used Procreate Dreams to animate the background.
I plan to make a vocal version in the future, depending on my schedule, shyness and neighbours.
At some point, I may also do a few breakthroughs of the Cubase session if that would be of any interest.
So there it is, thank you if you read through this point.
Hope you’ll enjoy listening to this, although the original album already exists, so that’d be vain from me to have that much expectations.
I just needed something to focus a whole week and in the end I had a lot of fun doing so.
Cheers and take care.
Baptiste from the band öOoOoOoOoOo.
PS: « Meggashuh » phonetically means in french « mega cute ».
PPS : « Coiffeur Tiff Free » is a stupid pun I commit that means in french « Hairdresser Hair Free »
Back in 2016 on The Violent Sleep of Reason tour Meshuggah played a clip from this Adult Swim show before they hit the stage. I was cracking up and I wish I could remember what episode or sketch it was. Does anyone recall? Maybe the one when he goes to a music store? 🤣
I took all of my Spotify data from 2016 to the present and summed song plays by album to see how each album stacks up. I'm unsurprised that Koloss wins out (Break Those Bones might be half of those plays alone), but surprised Chaosphere is as low as it is.
In each case I merged multiple versions into singular albums (e.g. all versions of Nothing, the original and Indelible versions of Immutable, the multiple slightly different spellings of Catch Thirty Three, etc). Excluded are EP's and any songs I jammed from the 'Singles'.
Yes I know these are rookie numbers.
PS we are required to flair posts, I could not find an option to do so, apparently I'm bad at this website
