April 2020 Feature Release - The Infinite Edition

It's now April which of course means that we'll be nominating a brand new monthly feature release for each clan. This essentially means that we're asking you to rate, review & discuss our chosen features for no other reason than because we enjoy the process & banter. We look forward to hearing your thoughts on these releases.       

This month's feature release for The Infinite is 2004's classic "I" E.P. from Swedish djent pioneers Meshuggah. It's comprised of a single 21 minute epic that's a real favourite for me personally & is arguably the most celebrated work in the djent subgenre. What do you think it? Does the djent sound float your boat?

I just did my review! Here's my short summary:

There are a few bands that have the idea of a making a single long song throughout an entire album thinking it would be a great as a Great American/European Novel. On the one hand, there's the fear of getting a crawling try of patience that would be much better lasting just 5 minutes instead of 50. On the other hand, a group can have so many ideas that can turn a single-song album in an ultimate masterpiece. The latter example is used in this release. This is I! You can hear almost everything Meshuggah had done so far in this EP, including downtuned riffs, rampaging drums, vicious growls, chaotic solos, crushing breakdowns, strange reverb, and dark arpeggios, all in 21 minutes of djent! "I" is a tremendous metal achievement for Meshuggah, a really long song that helped popularize djent. There are heavier extreme metal albums out there but nothing can beat the cerebral nature of this music. Enjoy the masterpiece of perfect apocalyptic destruction that is I!

I hate to be "that guy", but djent has never been my subgenre of metal. Djent, for me, has always felt like the hybrid of the groove heavy nature of metalcore, combined with the technical proficiency that is technical death metal. And while I do believe that their are bands that can pull this kind of sound off well, Meshuggah have never been that group.

This album sounds like a collection of ideas left on the chopping board from previous albums that were slapped together with no sense of direction or intention. The transitions are non-existent between the different ideas and the first half of the track leaves no emotional impact on me whatsoever. The second half is more memorable and I point those moments out in my review.

But I also take time to discuss my general distaste for modern trends in progressive metal and the rise of djent as a subgenre over the last few years. There are instances in which djent can be pulled off well, but they need to be controlled and balanced with something else to allow for the technical stuff to hit with more authority. When the entire song is chugg-chugg-chugg, it loses it grandeur after a while. I also mention long songs with no sense of direction or inter-connectivity. If I was a six or seven song EP, I might be a little bit more forgiving... but these guys sold this as a twenty-one minute song, and as a result, I have to critique it like a twenty-one minute song!

Meshuggah have never been for me, and will probably never be "for me", and that's okay. Melodic songwriting has never been Meshuggah's bread and butter; rather their dank grooves, and their is an audience for that. But so long as "progressive metalcore" bands like August Burns Red, and more technical djent bands like Animals As Leaders and TesseracT exist, I won't be joining the masses to sing this songs praises.

5/10

I gave Meshuggah another shot after enjoying their 2016 album The Violent Sleep Of Reason by checking out Catch 33 and Nothing (2002) to mixed results. My taste in metal has shifted since 2016, since I was definitely more fond of Meshuggah back them, but I can see where the hype for Catch 33 was coming from. I came out one year before Catch 33, and it's an extremely interesting EP because it feels like a test run of Catch 33 with Nothing's production and style, which is inferior in my opinion. It's hard to really analyze Meshuggah because, like Saxy explains above me, they can be very one dimensional in how they write their music. It's all about the chug, the aggression, and the dark themes, which works well for some people and for others it turns into grinding monotony that you can't get away from. 

In terms of this album versus Catch 33, I can see how die-hard Meshuggah fans would enjoy this one more, because it's aggression overload. Catch 33 has more variety and atmosphere, but I just has that Djent chug for a solid 16 or 17 minutes of the 21 minute song. If you're into that, this album is a paradise for you, especially if you prefer Meshuggah's old production style with more trigger-sounding snare and bass drums and deeper but slightly messier sounding guitar tone. I still have a few Meshuggah albums to check out, like 2006's Nothing, but the straight-up Djent style isn't for me. They vastly improved over Nothing (2002) though, so I think that warrants a slightly higher score than what it seemed like I might give. 

3.5/5