OBZEN

I like to call OBZEN "The Very Average of Meshuggah", mostly because this album doesn't bring anything new to the band' sound and style. It's just kind of résumé of band' career since Destroy Erase Improve. And yes, I know that members of Meshuggah said that it's going to be a summary of their achievements to date - I just don't feel convinced. In my opinion, when band says things like that it only means that... they don't have ideas good enough to release an interesting record. Well, it's a better way than releasing dozens of crummy albums after all.

What I hate most about ObZen is the very beginning. Combustion is just atrocious... I don't like it at all! I don't know Fear Factory very well, but this song brings to my mind only that association - mediocre riff, mediocre drumming, boredooooom. Really weak song. After this one we've got Electric Red as a consolation. It's classic Meshuggah song with black hole atmosphere, tangled rhythms and so on. A decent song.

After these two there are another seven songs - some of them are better, some of them are weaker (maybe except for Bleed which is fairly interesting piece), any of them introduces a breath of fresh air. It's a decent album that abound with good motifs, mostly well-known by every fan of the Swedes.