Meshuggah

[greg]

Anyone listen to them here?

I found this interesting:

Tom Service from guardian.co.uk stated about Meshuggah: "There's as much rhythmic obsessiveness and intricacy in the relentless polyrhythms of Swedish metal maestros Meshuggah as there is in Reich or Ligeti – with the difference that Meshuggah use the supreme technical sophistication and overpowering volume of their 5-in-the-time-of-4 patterns to serve rather different expressive ends: Terminal Illusions as opposed to Different Trains".[72]

An interesting comparison, though not something I can say too much about since I haven't ever studied in-depth any of their music.
There is a lot of stuff interesting about this band (they are considered "experimental metal," after all)- for one, they had an album that is one continuous song broken up into tracks and over 40 minutes long in all (not unheard of, but unusual), and on that same album they used drum programming with samples of the drummer's drumkit instead of actual recorded drumming, and I couldn't even tell the difference!

Another is the use of 7 and 8 string guitars. They tune the 7th string guitars an augmented fourth down  so that a low B on the 7th string becomes a low F! (i didn't it was possibly to go that low) Also, they are one of the first to use 8 strings, making their range even wider.

And finally, the rhythmic aspect of their music. Unfortunately, they don't have any guitar tabs that I know of, so the only thing I've looked at is some random guitar tabs online, so I haven't done any in-depth study on it, though I've tried to figure some of it out.

Here's an example and a video (one of my favorites, "New Millenium Cyanide Christ." 

The song, in typical Meshuggah fashion, applies various poly-metrical changes throughout the song, though the song as a whole is firmly rooted in an altogether standard time signature of 4/4, which is shown mainly through the consistent cymbal and snare pattern in the drum track throughout the song. Any unconventional rhythms within the guitars therefore end up conforming to this traditional time signature. Ignoring the standard metre of the drums, though, and solely concentrating on the guitars would give these results:
    * The intro riff is five measures of 23/16 and one of 13/16.
    * The verse is 9 measures of 3/8 and one measure of 5/8.
    * The passage from the lyrics "Self-inflicted fractures" changes to 3/4, 9/16, 3/4, 9/16, 3/4, 5/8
    * The passage from the lyrics "Baptized in vitriolic acid" and the guitar solo alternates between 7/16 and 9/16
    * The passage from the lyrics "Disciples" changes to a 4/4 rhythm, which can be seen as a 4/4, 3/4, 5/5, 4/4 pattern.
    * The ending riff is 6/8, 8/8, 6/8, 8/8, 4/8 (which all adds up to 32/8, and could be divided into four 4/4 measures)

http://www.youtube.com/watch/v/4A_tSyJBsRQ

[Brian]

All I know is that the Indian chieftain in Blazing Saddles says, "Zeiten ist meshuggah! Dey darker den us!"

[greg]

All I know is that the Indian chieftain in Blazing Saddles says, "Zeiten ist meshuggah! Dey darker den us!"

hmm... he couldn't be referring to white man? 

[bwv 1080]

meshuggah is a yiddish word for crazy, which is the humor in the Mel Brooks piece

this is a great band, one that transcends its genre and makes as good of music as anyone out there today

the rhythmic structures are typically odd beat groupings that cycle over several bars of a basic 4/4 meter

check out the rhythm in Pravus, from their most recent album ObZen

http://www.youtube.com/watch/v/q-pf-T2svgE

[greg]

I have that album... (actually, all the others, too). 

One thing I have to say is that some of their song titles I don't even understand...
what in the world does "Abnegating Cecity" and "Quant's Quantastical Quantasm" mean? 

[bwv 1080]

I have that album... (actually, all the others, too). 

One thing I have to say is that some of their song titles I don't even understand...
what in the world does "Abnegating Cecity" and "Quant's Quantastical Quantasm" mean? 

I think there is a tongue in cheek aspect to some of the names and lyrics

[greg]

Anything tongue-in-cheek to the lyrics of Catch 33? (just wondering)

1. Autonomy Lost

Reaching for the inner bright, the very essence-sun of my dreaming bliss
Guided by a fear blinded outside all shades of the perfect black


2. Imprint Of The Un-Saved

The scattered jigsaw of my redemption laid out before my eyes
Each piece as amorphous as the other - Each piece in its lack of shape a lie


3. Disenchantment

Me - the paragon of fear, an immobile skein of tangled nerves exposed
Hastily clawing my way into the darkest of my inner scenes of torture

I stay my breath to escape this slavery
I stay my breath to re-awake and face it encore
The struggle to free myself of restraints, becomes my very shackles


4. The Paradoxical Spiral

Non-physical smothering. Asphyxiation by oxygen hands
Drowning in the endless sky. An ever-downward dive, only to surface
the sewage of indecision, on which all sense of self is afloat
The vortex-acceleration a constant. Resolute in purpose its choking flow


5. Re-Inanimate

My ignorance cast in the mold of all things absolute
I sustain forever my gaze. A stare fixed on the distant oblivion
Resting in the inverted state of being dead, non-sensory matter
As all the earth, the wind, the fire, the sea behold and learn to pity me


6. Entrapment

Mutiny of self. Insurrection games convincingly performed
Incapacitated by physical thoughts acting out the will of tendon and bone
Have the bridges of insanity been crossed and forever retracted?
Am I standing among a thousand selves? Is the multitude of laughters mine alone?


7. Mind's Mirrors

The feeding frenzy of my starving soul, gnawing voraciously at the bones,
the exo-skeletal patchwork protecting my own reflection within;
The twin-and-same engaged in the mirrored act of chewing away
at the shell of my attacking self. The paradox unseen

Treacherous this deceit to make no choice matter
To have and yet lose yourself, until finally all reasons why are forgotten
To live through ones own shadow. Mute and blinded, is to really see
Eclipse the golden mirror and the reflection is set free


8. In Death - Is Life

So imminently visible - this cloaked innocent guilt
Sentenced to a lifetime, a second of structured chaos
Trampled by the ferocious, raging crowds of solitude
I'm the soil beneath me soaking up the sustenance of my own death

Extradited to the gods of chance, the deities of all things random
Alive, multicolored, twitching in their dead monochrome world


9. In Death - Is Death

Iridescent to the searhing eyes, I'm all things vivid in a world of grey
So easily spotted, so easily claimed in this domain where all is prey

My thoughts a radiant beacon to the omnidirectional hunter-god radar
I'm a markerlight of flesh to these subconscious carnivores
I am them. I am teeth. I'm their arousal at the kill
Feasting on self. A schizoreality warp. The contradiction fulfilled

Focus the only means to see me back to life's unending swirl
A reversal of passing away, as the world of dead, as away is now my origin


10. Shed

I float through physical thoughts. I stare down the abyss of organic dreams
All bets off, I plunge - Only to find that self is shed


11. Personae Non Gratae

A lie to maintain equilibrium, to hold me in this dead realm - this last ever dream
I'm the thought that never crossed my mind - disguised in the evident. Forever unredeemed


12. Dehumanization

A new level reached, where the absence of air lets me breathe
I'm inverted electrical impulses. A malfunctioning death-code incomplete
All things before me, at first unliving glimpse undeciphered
Its semantics rid of logic. Nothing is all. All is contradiction

Grinding, churning - the sweetest ever noises
Decode me into their non-communication
A soundtrack to my failure, one syllable, one vowel

A stagnant flow of endings. Un-time unbound. Merging to form the multi-none
A sickly dance of matter, malignantly benign. Greeting the chasm - unbearable, sublime


13. Sum

Vision will blind. Severance ties. Median am I. True are all lies