31st March 2022

Review: “Immutable” by Meshuggah

“For us, it wasn’t all that clear that we were making a new album. We knew we could do it, but did we want to do it? We had to decide, are we doing this or what else are we doing? After a long, long discussion, we agreed on certain things. We would make an album with as few restraints as possible. We would go in and try to make as cool an album as possible, have no anxiety about it and see it as an opportunity. How do we make this a challenge that we feel like accepting and rising up to? Pretty quickly we had a starting point. Everybody started to write, the ball started rolling and suddenly we were sitting there, discussing how many songs we were going to have to cut!” ~ Mårten Hagström, guitars

Recorded at Sweetspot Studios in Halmstad Sweden, mixed by Rickard Bengtsson & Staffan Karlsson and mastered by multiple Grammy award winner Vlado Meller (Metallica, Rage Against The Machine, System Of A Down) before being adorned by artwork from Luminokaya once again, the ninth studio album from Swedish pioneers Meshuggah has finally arrived. Six long years after predecessor “The Violent Sleep Of Reason“, the latest step in a career that began in 1987 and has seen the Extreme Metal pioneers who paint in Progressive Groove infused Death Metal (and create the sub-genre DJent), “Immutable” finds them taking us once more on another tech-metal odyssey that refines and redefines their sound once more in the fires of Valhalla. After 35 years there can’t be many who wouldn’t know what they would be in for from a Messuggah album. Brutal staccato riffs are accompanied by sinister dissonant guitars and eerie melodies with crushing off kilter time signatures shrouded in a veil of darkness. Intricacies between each vicious hammer blow fill the void with depth and texture creating something new with each record as the band march on to the pounding drums of Tomas Haake. From the slow burning introduction of the building “Broken Cog” in which Jens Kidman offers a sinister spoken word that erupts into his more traditional throat grating unclean system before dropping back to the more direct but equally punishing “The Abysmal Eye” those hallmark stylings are etched into every cut, the core sound unflinchingly remaining the same. It’s as restless and relentless as any of it’s predecessors but intriguingly not as heavy, as in from 10 to 9, dialled back in favour of some left field moments like the glorious tapping sections of “God He Sees In Mirrors” and “Kaleidoscope” in particular being shining lights in the thunderous black bounce of the bands tectonic plate shifting rhythmic pummelling.

By doing what they have done with “Immutable” the quintet of elder Metal statesmen have avoided getting stuck in the groove of 2008’s seminal album “ObZen“, pushing things forward with vim and vigour while sweeping aside the naysayers as they march on. The first album not to feature any writing contributions from co-founder and lead guitarist Fredrik Thordendal is still rich in alien sounding leads, his work on the colossal mid record instrumental “They Move Below” making it a stunning piece worthy of a Stanley Kubrick film score. By contrast to that giant monolithic stab of dense wonder, heavier than an anvil and more destructive than a slab of concrete falling from a sky onto the head of an unsuspecting passer by, “Black Cathedral” is a short and yet drawn out instrumental prayer for the dying that makes for an immaculate conception in Black Metal style tremolo riffage. If the creatures depicted in the words of Lovecraft were sonic beasts then they would be as colossal as the punishing grooves of the rhythm section of Meshuggah, particularly on cuts like “Armies Of The Preposterous” where there is no option but to snap your neck to the sound of their sonic oblivion thanks to a tempo shift up that makes it a more ferociously barbed affair. Slick and intelligent, “Immutable” is a conquest as captivating and enthralling as it’s crushing predecessors [8.5/10]

Track listing