CATCH THIRTYTHREE

I don’t wander over into tech-metal territory all that often, but it pays to check out what the kids are listening to once and a while – helps explain their zombie-like stares as they trudge through the mall.

Seriously though, I’ve actually heard some pretty decent extreme metal music on a few occasions. There’s that Cynic album (still can’t get “Veil of Maya” out of my head and the damn thing is fourteen years old!). And Opeth’s ‘Blackwater Park’ is one I still play from time to time. Then there’s,….. well, there’s,……. erm,…….

That Cynic album is pretty amazing.

So I’m not a major fan of this kind of music. Possibly because there isn’t a whole heck of a lot of it worth getting into, and this album isn’t much of an exception. First off, simply creating guitar arrangements of basically one riff with oddly-phased timing doesn’t make an album exceptional. Whether the riff is a finger-picking acoustic one on a simple folk album or a death metal-like dirge, it’s still one lousy riff. On ‘Catch-33’ the band trades that one in for another one somewhere around “Re- Inanimate”, but then there’s several more minutes of that second one and a bit of an encore again toward the end of the album. Yawn.

“Mind´s Mirrors” is just a tad more interesting with the sound effects and moody passage, but only because it means the two chords we’ve been listening to for a while are over for now.

And “In Death - Is Death” breaks the mold for a big chunk of the album (over thirteen minutes actually), but there’s nothing new introduced in this track after the fourth minutes beyond some sonic noodling and brief periods of almost total silence. Sounds like the band just left the tape rolling in the studio while they cleaned the knobs on their effects generator and stepped outside for a smoke.

After that we’re back to “Personae non Gratae” and what appears to be the same guitar riff as what was on the first three tracks, followed by – well, more of the same with “Dehumanization” followed by the closing “Sum” with almost imperceptible wispy guitar notes trailing off into nothingness.

So maybe it’s not fair for a non metal-guy to violate the sanctity of the holy chambers of tech metalhood, but I’m here so deal with it. Really, there’s only so much any band can do with three guitar/ bass players and a drum machine, no matter how hard they try and how good of musicians they are. Meshuggah may actually be a stellar metal band, and I’ve read several reviews and bios that say they are. But on this album I can’t say they really rose to the challenge. This sounds more like noise for the sake of inciting angry fifteen year old boys to violence. It’s been done before. Two stars for fans of the band but I doubt beyond those that there are even many metal fans who would find this to be great.

peace