Album Review: Meshuggah - Immutable [The Indelible Edition]
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
Albut three years to the day since the initial release of their ninth studio album, Immutable, Swedish sonic experimentalists, Meshuggah, have returned to the scene of the crime and now offer us this: the Indelible Edition of that record.
Superficially featuring new artwork, still based around the original concept, and adding three previously unavailable live tracks, this new edition of Immutable seeks to enrich the audio through a complete remaster, with the intention of offering a deeper immersion into the band’s twisted post human compositions.
The title of the record is a reference to the band’s intention to keep following the path they have been on since Destroy Erase Improve back in 1995, stripping extreme music down to its bare essentials before reconstructing it in abstract forms. Following the rawer sound of The Violent Sleep of Reason, Immutable pushes further the boundaries of their extremity.
A good half of the record’s tracks have been played live over the past three years, with regular set opener, Broken Cog launching the album. Here, Tomas Haake’s drums boom with a bowel-shuddering weight, the guitars Mårten Hagström and Fredrik Thordendal sketch out delicate footprints through the tune as Dick Lövgren’s bass has the Herculean task of binding it all together in some form of cohesive whole. It’s still an effective album and set opener, acting as a gateway to The Abysmal Eye’s symphonic polyrhythms and Light the Shortening Fuse’s groover-oriented beats. All three songs were released as pre-album singles.
The massive hits of Ligature Marks, continued through God He Sees in Mirrors, and the head-nodding drive of Kaleidoscope have all featured in Meshuggah’s live set in the years since Immutable was released, so I thought it would be interesting to look again at the deeper-cuts from the album.
![Album Review: Meshuggah - Immutable [The Indelible Edition]](https://i0.wp.com/live.staticflickr.com/65535/54419219367_811b22cbc7_c.jpg?w=678&ssl=1 "Album Review: Meshuggah - Immutable [The Indelible Edition]")
Unusually for the band, Immutable features three instrumental passages: They Move Below, Black Cathedral and Past Tense, leaving Jens sitting out about a quarter of the record. If memory serves me correctly, the only instrumental tracks Meshuggah had previously recorded were Acrid Placidity from Destroy Erase Improve and Nothing’s Obsidian.
They Move Below is ten-minutes of Meshuggah being Meshuggah with a modicum of restraint. All the usual aspects of their sound are there, but the need to rage and bemuse is tempered by its lack of vocals. Black Cathedral goes the other way and is a two-minute vignette of what a Meshuggah black metal album might sound like; the coda of Past Tense an enticingly atmospheric acoustic six-minutes, the aftermath of the storm, if you will.
Jens plays a major role in Immutable’s less acknowledged tracks, and the fact that none of these has been aired live – yet – does not mean they are in anyway inferior of those that have. Phantoms grooves with some choppy, Nu Metal sounding guitars; I Am That Thirst deceives with its progressive skipping beats, only to obliterate with its sheer weight. The Faultless features a crazy solo from Fredrik, while Armies of the Preposterous’ rapid drumming belies the soaring melodies at its heart.
Live versions of Kaleidoscope, Ligature Marks and God He Sees in Mirrors are all note perfect as you would expect but also act as an example that although Meshuggah seems to have evolved beyond the merely human, they are, still at their core, a raging metal band.
Other than the heavy Metallica influences of the debut, Contradictions Collapse in 1991, Meshuggah have made a career of not sounding like anyone else, choosing instead to lead rather than follow.
Their legacy as one of extreme music’s most innovative and mind-bending outfits is assured and the divisive nature of their style is bound not to be everyone’s cup of tea.
Me, I love ‘em, and this Indelible Edition of Immutable gives a crystal-clear presentation of their latest work. Not so much essential, but rather appealing to those whose minds have been sufficiently twisted into Meshuggah’s form.
