Meshuggah – “Catch Thirty Three”
Metallica likes them. Tool likes them even more. Ozzy Osbourne’s son likes them, too. A lot of musicians and magazines respect this band, actually (Does any of that matter to anyone?!). Well, for one thing, this album is different from everything considered metal or rock, for that matter. My impression upon hearing: it collapses two currents or two streams or even two directions and it results in an incongruous pace. The vocals are screamed/shouted/growled, as usual, which probably will continue to limit their audience since not everyone likes these vocals. It’s possible that this band is using a weird guitar that sounds like a bass guitar, but this time around I hear very little guitar. Instead, the bass and drum machine/programming (no real drummer this time) are pretty dominant. If you are a musician, you’ll probably be curious to hear this stuff. I’m not, so I’m not. To me, this sounds like the bass player is playing one single note for an eternity. The drum machine is doing the same thing for a long, long time. The whole album is one big song with some pauses here and there. It’s a very midpaced, monotonous, one-two, one-two, thump, thump-type of album. I found this to be really boring and bland.