“ObZen” is the first true full length after “Nothing”. The band itself says this is the real follow-up of the lucky and killer albums out in 2002: “I” and “Catch 33” are to be considered a simple EP the former, the latter an experiment they wanted to release on the same path of the solo album by Fredrik “Sol Niger Within”, released in 1997. Thus premised, we can sa yteh come back of Meshuggah is the nth trip within the skull of a gelid rational criminal mind. If on one side they take back (unexpectedly) some elements from the past, liket he thrashy outbursts of “Combustion” (that really burns), lacking in “Nothing”, from this they take some brainy schemes (though less complicated) and the slow rhythms, as well as the large riffs that are a true psychological torture (“Electric Red”, “Lethargica”). We feel a certain Tool ascendancy in the riffs (that which closes “Combustion”, the breaks of “Electric Red”) and we can’t help but realizing that Jens Kidman, with the time passing by, becomes more and more poisoned and bastard: scary. The paroxysm of the first single “Bleed” is quite freezing your veins, with that vortex riff they repeat at length, the double bass drums attacks by Haake that makes complex a linear tempo, that winding around the single melodic (?) wicked theme. As by script we meet the proverbial areas of space decompression with reverber guitars that typical of the most cosmic side, but the formidable jazz solos by Fredrik are less and less frequent. Meshuggah sublimate the metal art and definitely reach the point of true reference for the whole extreme scene. No band like them can be so elegant in hitting with a buzzsaw, in being that concrete in the psychic torture of the listener, progressively torn out by the violence the band can unleash. The title track is a flame thrower against our head; “Dancers To A Discordant System” the terminal tour de force with tribal rhythms, with the guitars of elastic steel that slice the air; “Pravus” digests some typical death scores. A bit more square and less maze-like than “Nothing”, “obZen” is the natural evolution, and the crystallization of the Meshuggah-like sound, great sum of what modern metal must be. Cynical and merciless as usual, we need them.

Marco Giarratana