How far can annihilation, madness, and violence go?
This "Nothing" presents itself as the third chapter of a successful trilogy started by the Swedes back in 1995 and, paraphrasing Scream 3, if 'Destroy Erase Improve' had set the rules of the Meshuggah Sound, made of post-thrash, jazz, and extraordinary odd times supported by that (mister) drummer who is Tomas Haake, 'Chaosphere' had partly broken them, eliminating the jazzy melodies (which I think greatly contributed to the success of DEI), increasing distortions and the crypticity of the tracks. "Nothing" completely ignores the rules.
Slow tempos, heavy as a tank, total elimination of melody, except in the crazy and schizophrenic solos of Fredrik Thordendal. Even the voice of the bald, the human beast, Jens Kidman is quite different: no longer the booming voice that screams "future breed machine!" but more reasoned, oppressive vocals, often "declared" in meter.
In this album, the Scandinavian five-piece mixes ten songs (a somewhat reductive term for these Compositions with a capital C) cold, hostile, devoid of any form of communication, in the name of the total crypticity.
A symbolic track could be Spasm, with its cadenced advance and highlighted by Thordendal's icy arpeggios, or Closed Eye Visuals, with that almost alien interlude, the only "calm" point of the album. With this fourth album, one could say that Meshuggah abandons metal as it is conventionally known, evolving into something more, something crazier, sicker, more inhuman.
Because it is clear that here you are dealing with the most ruthless madness.
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