Meshuggah

Vinyl Records and Rare LPs:

	Contradictions Collapse Colored Vinyl - New - 4663 Sealed 2018 2LP Gatefold. Special Edition Reissue On White Vinyl, Limited To 700 Copies. more
	I Colored Vinyl - New - NB 4668 Sealed 2019 very limited edition single-sided EP reissue pressed on Blue & Yellow splatter vinyl. Features reimagined cover art, layout and remastering for audio. "With its jackhammer drumming and manic guitar work, I will immediately sit well with fans who long ago came to expect virtuosity and machine precision from Meshuggah. Those who haven't been following extreme metal or Meshuggah in particular will find I an excellent introduction. It may only be an EP, but it's an ambitious one that packs a dizzying array of changes and styles in its single epic 21-minute track. Over a bed of heavy thrash metal sludge comes a runaway train of spidery jazz riffs, eerie doom-laden atmospherics, and enough quick turns and hiccupping changes to fill a few albums. I is relentless and those unaccustomed to Meshuggah may be put off by it, but those who stick with it will be duly rewarded." All Music Guide – Wade Kergan more
	Koloss Colored Vinyl - New - NB 4671 Sealed, very limited edition 2019 2LP 45rpm reissue pressed on Brown with Grey swirl. "Rather than trying to beat their ever-growing legion of imitators at their own game, Swedish prog metal destroyers Meshuggah look to prove that other bands not only aren't in the same league as them, but aren't even playing the same sport. On Koloss, their seventh album, they call upon all of their technical mastery as they take a slower, more groove-oriented approach to songwriting that's more about the perfect execution of precisely syncopated riffs than simply getting out there and proving that they've taken guitar lessons. While restraint isn't necessarily a word one would seem likely to use while describing a band as extreme as Meshuggah, it's exactly that quality that makes Koloss such a solid, even airtight, album. With so many years of experience as innovators under their belts, they have the kind of restraint and patience required to not overplay songs like the album-opening "I am Colossus" and the later track "Swarm." Rather than feel the constant need to dazzle the listener with guitar heroics, Meshuggah let everything just unfold in the most brutally heavy and effective way possible. With their status as the old guard on the more progressive end of the extreme music spectrum, Meshuggah have easily proven to listeners time and time again that they know their way around their instruments better than most, so even though Koloss isn't the band's most daring or experimental work to date, it's definitely worth any metal fan's time." All Music Guide – Gregory Heaney more
	Koloss Colored Vinyl - New - NB 4671 Sealed, very limited edition 2019 2LP 45rpm reissue pressed on "Bone" vinyl. "Rather than trying to beat their ever-growing legion of imitators at their own game, Swedish prog metal destroyers Meshuggah look to prove that other bands not only aren't in the same league as them, but aren't even playing the same sport. On Koloss, their seventh album, they call upon all of their technical mastery as they take a slower, more groove-oriented approach to songwriting that's more about the perfect execution of precisely syncopated riffs than simply getting out there and proving that they've taken guitar lessons. While restraint isn't necessarily a word one would seem likely to use while describing a band as extreme as Meshuggah, it's exactly that quality that makes Koloss such a solid, even airtight, album. With so many years of experience as innovators under their belts, they have the kind of restraint and patience required to not overplay songs like the album-opening "I am Colossus" and the later track "Swarm." Rather than feel the constant need to dazzle the listener with guitar heroics, Meshuggah let everything just unfold in the most brutally heavy and effective way possible. With their status as the old guard on the more progressive end of the extreme music spectrum, Meshuggah have easily proven to listeners time and time again that they know their way around their instruments better than most, so even though Koloss isn't the band's most daring or experimental work to date, it's definitely worth any metal fan's time." All Music Guide – Gregory Heaney more
	Nothing Colored Vinyl - New - NB 4667 Sealed 2019 very limited edition reissue, pressed on "Beer" (Gold) vinyl housed in a gatefold jacket. "Within the realms of metal, few bands are more esoteric and left-brained than Meshuggah. These Swedes make music for clinically minded deconstructionists, and one really has to reduce Meshuggah's sound to its individual elements before seeing the overall picture. Nothing, their fourth full-length slab, only further cements their place as masterminds of cosmic calculus metal -- call it Einstein metal if you want -- and, to their credit, they're really the only ones to fall into said sub-subgenre. When odd riff cycles, robotic death vocals, neo-jazz chromatics, and mathematical songwriting are your primary weapons, it would seem easy to paint yourself into a corner creatively -- so where is Meshuggah to go after Destroy Erase Improve, the band's powerful statement of intent, and its follow-up, the suffocatingly violent and clattery Chaosphere? Well, besides being heavier -- guitarists Marten Hagstrom and Fredrik Thordendal used eight-string guitars to give extra growl to their off-kilter, occasionally dissonant chording -- the appropriately titled Nothing boasts more spacious arrangements, the jarring tempo and time shifts colliding with each other until the songs collapse on themselves like black holes (see "Glints Collide" and the seven-plus minutes of "Closed Eye Visual"). From there, light bends into "Nothing," the theme of the record rooted in existentialism and the psychic trauma it causes on the brain -- and so goes the cranium stretching, through "Straws Pulled at Random," "Spasm," and the creepily invigorating lunar strains of "Obsidian," all being anti-melodic, teeth-grinding jaunts into opaque mathematical regions, importing small amounts of Tool's psychedelia into the group's Death-by-way-of-Gang of Four sonic maelstrom. Nothing truly gives new meaning to the word heavy, redefining boundaries by pushing metal into the realms of abstract science; for those lucky enough to be tuned into Meshuggah's unique wavelength, the album, like all good art, tickles the subconscious while probing both the internal (the mind) and the external (space). And when Meshuggah explores, it's into uncharted territory. If only more metal bands could be so daring." All Music Guide – John Serba more
	obZen Colored Vinyl - New - NB 4670 Sealed 2019 2LP limited edition reissue pressed on Blood (Red) & Pink swirl vinyl, housed in a gatefold jacket. "On first listen, the sound on Obzen, Meshuggah's sixth full-length, is startling, not for its trademark rapid-fire key and tempo changes, or for the intricate, insanely knotty riffs that careened over 2002's Nothing or 2005's Catch Thirty-Three. Instead, it is the rampaging charge that leads off the set on "Combustion," a balls-out sprint that recalls the band's earlier catalog albums like Contradictions Collapse, Destroy Erase Improve, and even Chaosphere. Power, focus and attention to the bone-crushing power are at the center of Obzen. That said, it loses nothing in terms of the band's keen focus of musical or technical innovation or drummer Tomas Haake's songwriting. What it does leave behind is some of the mathy quick-change-for-the-sake-of-it annoyances that were more a show-off of athletic prowess than actual compositional tropes. The melodic orchestration of Catch Thirty-Three has all but disappeared, and in its place is a direct, almost machine-like sense of communication. What's most remarkable is the live drum kit work by Haake. He's constant and startling -- the completely crazy bass pedal work on "Bleed" would leave most drummers in the dust. You have to wonder, since the last album featured so many triggered laptop tooled drums. Again: power, compositional ethics, and musical acumen are all tied to one thing, building a foundation that just gets wider, deeper, and more intense as the album wears on. Check the frenetic slash and burn ethos in "Pineal Gland Optics," where both guitars stagger their rhythmic attack keeping vocalist Jens Kidman on the money the whole time. It gives way to the unwound pummeling drum and guitar solo riff that introduces "Pravus," with its sense of taut dynamics, hair-trigger tensions, and an explosiveness that is literally unequaled. This is sheer attack metal, played by a band that has run from simplicity to excess and incorporated them both into a record that is on a level with anything else they've done, even if not all the elements marry perfectly yet. Just get it." All Music Guide – Thom Jurek more
	Obzen New - Vinyl - BOBV079LP Sealed 2008 2LP Gatefold Original. more