Review by Daniel for Meshuggah - obZen (2008)

I have mixed feelings about this album. On the positive side, the band rightly decided not to take the one-track epic with programmed drums any further as it had run it's course. Instead they decided to go back to their roots & returned with a sound that is basically a combination of all of their albums to date. On paper that sounds great. In practise it means that "ObZen" doesn't really offer anything that you haven't heard from them many times before. Because of this I find my attention waning at times during this album.   

All of the usual Meshuggah highlights are here (including the crushing bass guitar) & I do find myself loving a lot of this record but I have a little bit of an issue with the production as there seems to be too much high-end which leaves the album sounding a bit noisy & less precise. There seems to be a wall of crash cymbal throughout pretty much the entire album & the guitars are not as full as on previous albums. There is also very little variety in the vocals & it might be time to introduce something different there. That pretty much sums up the album really. A couple of Meshuggah's previous albums have been carried by the complexity & technicality of the song structures & riffs. "ObZen" is probably a little less complex than their recent releases which should help them recreate this stuff live. But this also takes away from the element that carried my interest during more monotonous periods on albums like "Catch Thirty Three".   

Overall, Meshuggah are still a fair distance above 99% of the metal scene (see "Bleed" which is as good a track as the band have ever recorded) & therefore I find it very difficult to give them a rating of less than 4 stars for such sublime metal music. However I think this will be the last time that I can justify giving a four-star rating to Meshuggah albums without them adding something new to their sound. Dazzle me guys!