ObZen

This box packages most of Meshuggah’s recorded work—7 studio albums and 3 EPs—and offers an overview of how this extreme metal band pushed the entire genre head-first into the future.

Meshuggah's dense, polyrhythmic roar elevates math-metal artisanship to such insane heights, the Swedish group often builds new ceilings just to smash through them. With 2005's Catch Thirtythree, the band delivered a suite of sampled drums and multi-tracked guitars so complex that it couldn't replicate the album live.…

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.

Expect the unexpected, declares the standard promotional literature with Meshuggah's sixth full-length studio recording.

There seem to be two divergent schools of thought on MESHUGGAH: those people whose perspective was permanently altered by the band's revolutionary "Destroy Erase Improve" and "Chaosphere" albums, and who've been unable to warm up to what the band's been up to since then, and those who discovered the...

Welcome back, Tomas Haake. It was quite impressive how natural (natural for extreme metal, anyway) the programmed drums sounded on 2005's Catch Thirtythree, but listening to Meshuggah's latest, obZen, it's clear that Haake brings something to the table that no drum machine-- programmed by the man hi

Meshuggah - obZen review: A potential metal album-of-the-year candidate thanks to Haake's triumphant return behind the kit and a hearty combination of new ideas interspersed with allusions to each of their previous albums.