THE VIOLENT SLEEP OF REASON

I am pleasantly surprised. The two tracks released as lyric videos ahead of the album release -- Born in Dissonance and Nostrum -- were good, but they didn't stand out. Listening to the full album, however, I'm happy to report that this is one of my favorites among their albums. It has their signature bajillion-string guitar sound with an energy they haven't matched since Chaosphere. Recorded live rather than track by track, Violent Sleep feels like the musicians actually enjoyed what they were doing, and the overall quality goes way up.

Overall, my highest compliment has to go to the fact that each song feels like it PROGRESSES. As much as I like their old material, I often feel like they sit on a single riff and do slight variations on it for four to five minutes. Here, there is variation. There is contrast of the sort that, on prior albums, you would really only get by hitting the "next track" button. This pays off in spades. For other bands this might be called something akin to "normal song structure," but playing at Meshuggah's level of skill is somewhat prohibitive to having such dramatic change-ups. So where a prior Meshuggah song might go from A to A' to A'' (such as Bleed), Violent Sleep has A, B, C, etc. in a single track. I have to respect the technical skill involved in learning multiple distinct and complex patterns for a single song.

There are only two real complaints I have against the album. First, some lyrics in MonstroCity are a little cringe- worthy. That should be apparent from the title. Meshuggah has never taken themselves as seriously as one might think they do, but... come on. Thankfully the instruments are actually really good on this track, and the lyrics grow on you in spite of themselves.

Second, Ivory Tower is a boring song. It isn't until about the 3:30 mark that we get any reprieve from the unrelenting triplet bass drum. It lacks that quality of progression that I praised about the rest of the album. Maybe it's just me, but I can't stop listening to the bass drum do the same thing over and over again. This might be fine if the thing it did was interesting, but it's just slow triplet eighth notes for five minutes.

Without getting into a track-by-track, here are the highlights:

Clockworks offers a relentless opener and a high bar for the rest of album. Haake shows off his jazz influences a bit more directly here, throwing in a bit of extra hand-work that doesn't necessarily come at the end of an eight bar phrase. It's a nice change of pace from how his drumming always seems so mathematical. It's still very much that, but he allows himself more freedom. He doesn't just carry on a 1-2-3!-4 between the high hat and snare like he does on so many songs. This generally carries through the rest of the album.

By the Ton is bizarre in a good way. They experiment with chord progression pretty liberally here. I think this is the song they called "a true twelve-tone song" in an interview, meaning there's no real key signature going on here. They use everything. There's also a distinct old-fashioned sound to the guitar. It's similar to their usual djent sound, but you can tell it's running through some kind of weird amp. It's hard to describe... you'll probably have to hear it for yourself.

The title track has some nice Shed-like psychedelic noises going for it, and the solo mid-song stands out from their traditional 56k modem logging into AOL solos by being... weirder? Again, I'm not sure how to describe it.

Nostrum has some fan-freaking-tastic drum work accompanied by minimalist guitars. It's like a better Spasm.

Kidman's voice also explores some new sounds throughout to great effect. It is more raw and unrestrained than the usual monotone.

The other songs besides Ivory Tower are at least very good. Ivory Tower itself is not terrible, just exceedingly mediocre among what is in my opinion their strongest work since Chaosphere.

My recommendation: if you like this style of music -- that is, extreme metal -- this is one of the best offerings I've heard in a long time. This is some Grade A material.