Has anyone heard meshuggah?

i recently have been listening to alot of their material and i love them.  They are extremely heavy, jazzy technical, and almost math-rockish.  If you hear their stuff and dont like it , listen to some stuff by fredrik thordendal its totally differnt, really jazzy.

"I" is pretty cool!

thanks, Bryan

Dreamer wrote: wait, are you talking about the band called meshuggah? Isnt it a death metal band? Thats what it sounds like to me...

No, it's not a detah metal band, the fact that it's more brutal than, say, Pantera, doesn't make it a death metal band yet... it's one of those bands that are really hard to stick a label on (no, it's not prog IMO, although there is some 90s and 2Ks King Crimson to it) and really hard to compare to anyone else without missing the point... an acquired taste, but well worth the acquiring. My fav is "Chaossphere". 

goose wrote: It is death metal, though, isn't it? Or at the least very brutal thrash.

More like the latter. Death metal has blast beats (or hyperblasts, or whatever they're called - bascially ultrafast drumming), growling vocals, lots of tempo changes (although death metal totally relentless in its high speed is anything but uncommon), and there is a very different feel to it. There is of course, the slightly more melodic Swedish 'school' of death metal, something Opeth still belongs to, to a certain extent, but it's still very different from Meshuggah. Many death metal heads find Meshuggah boring and object to labelling them death metal.   

Useful_Idiot wrote: I guess they COULD be classified as death or thrash metal, but I haven't encountered another band in either of those genres that sounds anything like them.  They have death metal's vocal style and for awhile had thrash's speed (although Nothing and Catch 33 have made it even more difficult to classify them due to the slower tempo), but they use time signatures and rhythmic techniques that you'll never hear from Cannibal Corpse or Iced Earth.  They're not really prog metal either, although they do have elements of it.  I've heard some use the term "math-metal" to describe them, but I really find it impossible to pinpoint exactly what style they're playing.  And really, who cares?

Err, hardly, I assure you (don't want to go into technicalites here). If you said that to a death metal fanatic he would make a Cannibal Corpse song out of you.

Strange, I'm trying to listen to one of the songs now. It's got all the death metal charecteristics, at least as far as i know. Fast double bass drums, fast guitar with loads of distortion, no real melody, screaming vocals. Even the song names, Sane, Future breed machine and War are extremely metal-ish.

Way too heavy to my liking.

Meshuggah are pretty good. I have their album "Nothing" down on my list of albums to buy, but there are many other CDs i would rather get. The thing that draws me to Meshuggah is the fact that they manage to create complex rhythms while still retaining an awesome groove. The thing that slightly turns me away is the fact that a lot of it sounds too similar. They over-use the whole polymeter thing until it gets boring. It's still good stuff to listen to, but i'm not sure if i could listen to a whole album of it.

I also have the Fredrik Thordendhal's (sp?) Special Defects cd, and that has the familiar polymeter thing going on, but more frequent jazzy, holdsworth-esque leads. It is quite interesting, but still i'm not sure if i would consider it brilliant. I will say, though, that the drumming from Morgan Agren is quite astounding to say the least

The difference between Meshuggah and death metal? For one thing, most death metal bands don't groove much at all, let alone the amount Meshuggah does. The vocals are much more shouted than growled, there's tremendous lack of double bass (drums) usage in Meshuggah. Thomas Haake tends to follow the guitar line with his feet and often snare (while there's always a cymbal - often the china - keeping the steady beat, hence the groove). Since the guitar lines are not blazing tremolo style picking, the drums don't indulge in that action either and you don't get that concrete bed of riffing style that a lot of death metal bands use. There's really huge atmospheric gap between Meshuggah and death metal. Loud and heavy does NOT equal death metal.

Having said all that, i'm not a genre nazi, and you guys can call Meshuggah what ever the hell you want as far as i'm concerned. It doesn't change how they sound, does it?

My opinion of Meshuggah is that their music is awful. But i can appriciate their musicianship.