I never quite understood the appeal of Meshuggah. Everyone kept raving on and on about how amazing and forward thinking they are, and praising the ground they walked on. I’ve tried to understand this phenomenon. I’ve listened to tracks off most their albums (sans Nothing), I’ve seen the band live twice, and I even listened closely to their 21-minute single song I EP. From this extensive investigation behind Meshuggah I’ve deduced that Meshuggah is possibly one of the most overrated acts in metal world; yeah they’re technical but that doesn’t mean shit if the music you put out is repetitive and bland.

So here I go into Catch 33, the newest full-length from these Swedes. Catch 33 acts as a follow-up to their I EP: it’s a 47-minute piece where all the tracks serve as chapters within one continuous song. Immediately this shoots up warning signs as I suffered from whole sections of dragging, repetitive riffs and sheer lack of variety. And guess what? Catch 33 does the same thing. The first 3 sections of Catch 33 are the same damn set of uninteresting riffs over and over again; there is a slight variation somewhere around the fourth or fifth section (I honestly can’t remember, that’s how bad this is) and the repetitive riffing drags on even longer.

So essentially you’re sitting through virtually the same god damn set of riffs for half the fucking record. Well, okay, they’re not all exactly the same, but the finished product sounds so damn similar you won’t know nor care. Then you get to the seventh section "Mind’s Mirror" and the music breaks down into the most annoying drawl of out-of-place doom and robotic vocals. And by robotic vocals, I’m talking the shitty robot voice distortion on Cynic’s Focus and Mayhem’s The Grand Declaration Of War. Yeah, that’s right, of all the effects to put on their album, Meshuggah chose the effect that has rarely ever been successfully integrated into any form of metal. This one section alone is so mind-numbingly bad, it actually makes you contemplate taking out the cd and using it as a mirror to shave your ass hairs with.

Fortunately, the following section "In Death - Is Life" actually breaks the shitty monotony somewhat and- gasp!- has some decent riffing. It’s still repetitive as a child begging for candy, but at least the riffs are enjoyable this time around. However, that doom experimentation rears around its ugly head again. Now, after being starved to death for quality riffs and getting a cock-tease of quality metal, these Swedes decide to give an elephant some laxative and take a swim in its after-product of juicy, hot shit by replacing the brief interludes of quality tech stuff with more god damn doom. Now the doom itself isn’t bad, but when you’re dying to get back to those good riffs, this is fucking torture. It has no proper context with the rest of the song. To make matters worse, the doom is almost minimalist in nature and feeds into atmospheric experimentation, so it’s void of any really heavy sound in a lot of parts.

So the rest of the album progresses like this: cool yet repetitive riff, long hauls of droning doom, another cock tease of the same fucking riffs, and more doom. Ugh, who the fuck told them this was good? Then you get to the final piece "Sum" where Meshuggah actually rips out a pretty good rising arrangement of riffs that culminates into an awesome fucking climax. But don’t get your hopes up quite yet: after "Sum" escaped the high point of said climax, I looked over at my cd player and guess what I saw? The song wasn’t even half way done. There was more cum guzzling, dragging doom. What would have served as an actually decent, fulfilling ending to a half-assed effort in tech metal has now been killed as the listener is intently holding on to see if there is a similar, bigger climax at the end of this atmospheric bullshit only to find he has been cheated. Fuck you Meshuggah, fuck you.

Catch 33 is a testimony to how obvious it is that just because a community raves about something doesn’t mean it’s worth its high pedestal. All this album did was re-affirm my belief that a sizeable population of Meshuggah fans has no taste. Skip this shit and go get the re-release of Rune’s The End Of Nothing or Gorguts‘ Obscura: those releases actually have great technical chops, awesome fucking riffs, and the doom manipulations in those albums actually fucking work.

Written By: Necro-tron