I want to start by off by stating that I don’t really think it is appropriate to try and describe Meshuggah’s music with the English language (Aphex Twin and Prince also belong in this category). The sounds, mood, tempos, and time signatures that this band creates are honestly from another dimension, not even the unknown fourth dimension, or the fifth or the sixth, but the 666’th. Meshuggah’s apocalyptic death metal are compositions made by aliens and are probably not healthy for human ears. You have to dedicate yourself to listening to these guys, the brutality and strain that it puts on your mind is like pulling your brains out of your head throwing them on a fancy skillet and frying them up with a side of kosher devil bacon. It’s so deliciously satisfying and yet feels so wrong.

Meshuggah are back at again with their seventh release Koloss and it is just as brain scrambling as their previous releases, but more consistent from song to song compared to their last album Obzen. Now don’t get me wrong “Bleed” on that album is absolutely terrifyingly good, but the rest of the songs did not seem to have the quality that “Bleed” had. Their drummer Tomas Haake even admitted that it took him the majority of the studio time to record the drum track for “Bleed” and the rest of the tracks were done in half the time. This is also the same guy that described his band’s music as “A giant pink cake in outer spacer being smashed by a baseball bat”… So awesome!

Koloss is amazing through out. The band is getting so good at conveying the mood and heaviness while still being technically awe-inspiring. After a few listens I have decided that there’s two categories that each track from the album belongs in. One – Terrifying and Heavy, Two – Terrifyingly Hard and Impossible to Play. The first category would include jams like “Do Not Look Down” and “Break Those Bones Whose Sinews Gave It Motion”. The second category includes soul melters like  “The Demons Name is Surveillance” and “Marrow” tracks like these two have such insane musicianship that its hard not losing my sanity trying to figure out where the riffs begin and end.

Overall Opinion: I’ve always had this theory that the creatures that we know as Dolphins are actually evolved humans still living here on earth, but have dedicated their existence to traveling the darkest depths of the unknown ocean, because that’s where their teleport is to travel to the new and improved earth. After listening to Meshuggah all these years, I have decided that these guys are Lucifer’s Satanic Dolphins that have de-evolved to torture and delight us with the greatest, thickest, trickiest most bad ass metal music of all time. They have no desire to travel to the new earth, because swimming in the ocean to get to the portal will ruin their black outfits. Plus, if they left us we wouldn’t have the pleasure of having our ears and minds burned with Satan’s outer space lullabies. Seriously though, this is Meshuggah at their best all streamlined and technically heavy. This album is solid and fantastic from start to finish.