Meshuggah
Nothing (Nuclear Blast)
by Martin Popoff
Could they be the next big thing? Certainly the skepticism must wane given the success of Slayer, then Marilyn Manson and Fear Factory, then Slipknot. Indeed, the hard, complicated music of Meshuggah has played arenas with Tool and, as Nothing hit the street, was the featured attack on the second stage at Ozzfest. How Swede it is. Nothing is the long-awaited follow-up to ’98’s Chaosphere, and the patented stun gun approach is intact and back-cracking, even if there’s a slower, airier, trippier vibe at work. The three-legged, sleep-deprived, angel-dusted lope of the band’s calculus rock becomes double-underlined by the band’s use of eight-string guitars, or rather, seven-strings configured with an eighth string, as they wait for Nevborn to deliver their fetching new axes (along with new Spinal Tap amps that go to 11).
(2323 W. El Segundo Blvd. Hawthorne, CA 90250)