ObZen (2008) Meshuggah

1. Combustion – 4:11  

2. Electric Red – 5:53  

3. Bleed – 7:23  

4. Lethargica – 5:47  

5. ObZen – 4:28  

6. This Spiteful Snake – 4:54  

7. Pineal Gland Optics – 5:15  

8. Pravus – 5:12  

9. Dancers to a Discordant System – 9:37  

Album duration: 52:40  

Genres: Progressive Metal, Extreme Metal, Groove Metal, Djent  

Lineup:

- Jens Kidman – Vocals  

- Fredrik Thordendal – Lead Guitar  

- Mårten Hagström – Rhythm Guitar  

- Tomas Haake – Drums, Lyrics  

- Dick Lövgren – Bass  

ObZen, released in 2008, is a landmark album in Meshuggah's discography. The band’s blend of chaotic polyrhythms, staggering syncopation, and extreme precision in execution reaches a peak here. Thematically, the album’s title combines the words "obscene" and "zen," suggesting a paradoxical state where inner peace is found through brutality and the grotesque. This juxtaposition serves as a recurring theme across the album, with lyrics delving into philosophical explorations of violence, humanity’s darkest instincts, and a bleak reflection on modern society.

Musically, ObZen is a convergence of Meshuggah’s earlier chaotic tendencies with a more structured and accessible approach. The production is clean and powerful, allowing every percussive strike and jagged riff to hit with full impact. Songs like Bleed have become iconic, representing the band’s technical mastery with relentless double-bass drumming and intricate guitar riffs that seem almost mechanically precise. The album continues to play with dynamics, shifting between frantic, speed-driven sections and slower, more groove-oriented moments, creating a constant tension that refuses to resolve. 

My favorite tracks include Bleed, Pravus, Combustion, Electric Red, and Dancers to a Discordant System. Bleed is a staggering piece of technicality, with its punishing rhythms and hypnotic repetition that build to a crushing intensity. Combustion opens the album with a furious energy that perfectly sets the tone for what's to come, while Electric Red showcases the band’s ability to layer groove with unsettling atmosphere. Pravus stands out with its relentless energy and complex rhythmic patterns. The lyrics are cryptic, diving into themes of fate and power. It’s a track that encapsulates the fierce, almost predatory nature of existence—suggesting that to ascend, one must embrace the darkness within. The song's intricate guitar work and driving momentum make it an essential part of the ObZen experience, blending technicality with raw emotion. The closing track, Dancers to a Discordant System, is a sprawling, nine-minute epic that encapsulates the album’s essence—an exploration of dissonance, beauty, and the chaos inherent in human nature.

ObZen represents a perfect distillation of Meshuggah’s career up to that point, balancing their earlier raw ferocity with the tight, calculated precision that defines their later work. It’s an album that stands as a testament to the band’s ability to push the boundaries of metal while still delivering a visceral and immediate experience.

Meshuggah's lyrics on ObZen are a crucial part of the album's thematic exploration, often serving as a bleak and unflinching commentary on the human condition. Tomas Haake, the band's drummer, wrote most of the lyrics, infusing them with philosophical and existential weight.

The title track, ObZen, encapsulates the central concept of the album: the idea that humanity finds a disturbing form of peace in violence and chaos. The lyrics explore this dark irony, reflecting on how the obscene and the serene coexist in the modern world. The imagery is often brutal, highlighting a dystopian view of society where the line between salvation and damnation is blurred.

In Bleed, one of the album's standout tracks, the lyrics convey a sense of relentless struggle and inner torment. Lines like "Beams of fire sweep through my head" and "What’s worth is left behind" paint a picture of personal or spiritual decay, underscored by the song’s punishing, mechanical rhythms. The repetition in the lyrics matches the hypnotic nature of the music, emphasizing themes of obsession, futility, and the cyclical nature of suffering. It’s almost as if the protagonist is caught in an unending loop, much like the relentless pulse of the track itself.

Electric Red dives into themes of artificiality and the loss of authenticity in a world increasingly dominated by technology and deception. The lyrics touch on humanity's willful blindness and self-delusion, exploring the comfort found in lies. This track critiques a society obsessed with power and control, dissecting how people find comfort in falsehoods rather than facing harsh truths.

The lyrics of Dancers to a Discordant System, the album’s closing epic, deliver a damning critique of societal constructs and the illusion of freedom. The track questions the nature of existence, suggesting that human life is a "dance" controlled by forces beyond comprehension—be it fate, societal expectations, or internal conflicts. The language is confrontational, with phrases like “We're the dross, the scum and the driftwood” pointing to the futility of individual will in the face of a collective, chaotic system.

Each song on ObZen plays with similar motifs of duality, chaos, and self-destruction, examining humanity’s darkest impulses. There’s a recurring sense that what we consider civilized is built on a foundation of brutality and instinct, that peace is often only a veneer masking deeper, violent tendencies. This philosophical depth gives the album a resonance beyond its technical metal prowess, inviting listeners to confront uncomfortable truths about the world and themselves. 

ObZen is not only a sonic assault but also a lyrical exploration of the dissonance within and without—the pull between our basest instincts and our search for meaning in an often incomprehensible existence.