Review by Saxy S for Meshuggah - I (2004)

Of all the trends that have come out of the ever expanding world of progressive metal, the one that I can't fully come to grasp with is djent. Djent is a genre that can always feel so lazy and devoid of any character and whose only unique trait is the technicality of the song structures, and everyone playing the same part in unison with one another. I have always seen djent as a progression of the very groove laden moments of metalcore.

And with that, we need to talk about Meshuggah and how I have never been their biggest fan. The technical proficiency in the songwriting and performances does not hide the fact that their music is incredibly empty. Which leads us into this EP (perhaps a single) I, a twenty-one minute "epic" that doesn't live up to the expectations that such a word would invoke. Simply put, this feels like a collection of ideas from the chopping board that have been placed together with no attention to how they work; implying no transitions or any sense of greater connectivity.

The first ten minutes of the song call upon those groove heavy elements of metalcore/djent and does nothing with them; their is no melodic flare, no sense of direction, and no inter-connectivity. It makes the first half of this song a chore to get through with nothing to grasp onto. When a solid groove comes in at the 10:30 mark, the song picks up some momentum. Not much, but it's a start! The addition of tremolo "melody" at 11:30 is pretty, but it is never elaborated on further. Instead, we get another technical chugg-chugg-chugg riff at 12:00. I will say though, the track ends very solidly from around 14:40, when we actually get a musical idea, that is elaborated on, expanded and given some girth as the group builds up towards the 17:00 mark, where the melodic phrase is distorted carefully into a heavy, and groovy conclusion.

Meshuggah have always had issues from a production standpoint as well. This is loud and ferocious at times, most notably at 1:30 when the mixing is blown out by Jens Kindman's vocals, not helped at all by open, palm-muted guitar chugging, and Tomas Haake relentlessly attacking his cymbals and bass drum. Outside of this hellish soundscape, the rest of the song does get better, but is still held back by the clipping percussion, mostly in the bass drum, one general problem that almost all djent artists deal with because of the genre's very percussive nature.

As a whole album, I by Meshuggah is not revolutionary. In fact, it further encapsulates everything I despise about modern progressive metal: songs that are way too long that are not deserving of it, heavy percussion built sound, and lacking in any hooks, melodies or phrases to latch onto. It also explains many of my general complaints with djent as a genre and why I may never truly become a fan. Meshuggah will always have an audience for their pure, unrelenting heaviness and dank grooves, but lack any substance outside of that to make them household names in the heavy metal community.