MESHUGGAH- KOLOSS

So there's this blog thing. I've been meaning to start one up for a while, and today I figured I could get started. This is because one of my absolute favourite bands are currently streaming their new release online. Assuming you're the kind of person who prefers to read titles before articles, you should have noticed this album is by Meshuggah, second only in my eyes to the mighty prog giants that are Dream Theater, but more on that at a later date.
I was first introduced to Meshuggah by "that metal kid". You know who it is, the guy who stubbornly refuses to conform to the point of pointlessness and takes every opportunity to remind of the greatest genre of music. Since I agree with him on that front, I'm good friends with "that metal kid" and I'm actually seeing Meshuggah with him on 20/4 in London. He played me their most famous song, Bleed and I was taken aback by how different it sounded. He'd previously introduced me to bands such as Amon Amarth, Children of Bodom and Ensiferum (3 bands who would later appear on the same bill on one unforgettable night) but all those bands combine heaviness with a clear sense of melody and strong, hooky riffs. This song seemed to eschew all that, but not in the Mathcore sense of extreme dissonance and high-energy chaos.Bleed instead felt as though all the emphasis had been put on rhythm. Everything from the drums to the guitars to even the vocals had the sense that they don't need arpeggiated runs to improve the song, only this insanely groovy pulse that had a seemingly impossible drum beat underneath.
So I was hooked Meshuggah's sound, their songwriting and their technical ability from that point onward, but now I feel that I should start talking about the album in the bloody title. Koloss is the band's 7th full-length release in 20 years and 4 years after their previous opus, ObZen, and with every album they've tried to evolve their sound into something fresh, and for the most part this has worked well. But with Koloss I can't really tell what the great evolution is. I can clearly point out the stylistic differences between Nothing's complete focus on poly-rhythms and Catch-33's focus on one continuous composition, moving through and developing musical motifs. But when you take ObZen and place it against the new opus, I can't tell you that any songs would sound out of place if you switched the track listing around. Not that I have a problem with that; I will always be in the mood for an AC/DC or Manowar binge, but Meshuggah hold a special place in the metal scene as constant innovators, pushing the boundaries of what it means to be an extreme band in the modern world. Unfortunately this unique pedestal they've been placed on has meant an entire scene of copy-cats and lazy musicians has built up around them, almost causing them to be swallowed up in the process. If you take a look at Got-Djent's ranking of band popularity, Meshuggah are only 3rd, with acts like TesseracT and Born of Osiris ready to overtake. This is like seeing a list of Thrash bands with Anthrax and Sodom placed above Slayer! Furthermore these young upstarts (I say unironically at the grand old age of 17) have been integrating many more elements into the core Meshuggah frame such as Deathcore. To many new listeners who've been introduced to the more teen-friendly appeal of, say, Veil of Maya, they may find Koloss actually stripped back to the point of redundancy. "Where's a clean chorus?" "Hey, you want to get off the bottom string, Frederik?" I can anticipate these kids saying, to which I will reply with a punch to the face in the shape of I am Colossus!
Yes, for all its lack of a clear path forward for the band and the apparent ability to ignore the entire Djent scene that's built around it, I still think this Album easily stands up with their finest output. As I felt with the recent Cannibal Corpse record, Torture, Meshuggah don't seem to have truly evolved, merely pouring all their effort into tight, concise songwriting (Something I clearly need to look at with regards to my review writing!)  The riffs across the board are brimming with the infectious groove that Meshuggah have defined themselves on since the turn of the century, whilst still maintaining that 4/4 beat in the hi-hat that avoids the problem other progressive acts like Animals as Leaders and Protest the Hero have, where no matter how heavy it is, the odd time signatures are impossible to headbang to! To contrast this, there seems to be a growing emphasis on simpler songs without all the poly-rhythmic head-fuckery. It started with ObZen's all-out thrash opener, Combustion, and it seems to continue into this album with Swarm, but it feels less like the barn-stormer its spiritual predecessor was.
In fact, the whole album is much slower than ObZen. It feels like they've taken the tempo of Nothing, the melodies of Catch-33 and the intensity of ObZen and fused them together in this unholy concoction, and it works very well. I read elsewhere that this could be the album to get stoned to this year, but having never tried such substances I can't hold any authority on that topic. But I can tell you it will inspire the legion of drummer's a Tomas Haake's feet to play ever more complex beats, the poets among you will revel in the deep metaphors crushed by Jens Kidman's inhuman vocal performance but most importantly Koloss has the pounding, thick textures that make you want to bang your head and cause harm to something.

I will defend Meshuggah to the ends of the Earth, but I think that Koloss deserves all the praise you will hear from it. Buy the album, go see them live (either with Animals as Leaders in the UK or with Decapitated in the US) and be prepared to have your head smashed in by the pummeling groove monster that is Meshuggah!