You never know what to expect from Swedish metal act, Meshuggah. Blending industrial, metal, thrash, melodic atmospheres, and complete ambience with their odd time signatures into almost an entirely new genre that can only be described as "crazy". Coincidentally enough, that is exactly what "Meshuggah" translates to. Now, while they are gearing up for a world tour, the newest release has just hit stores and presented the question, "Are we really ready for this?"

Offering the world an entirely different type of heavy music, most of the harsh lyrics written to topics that lean more towards conceptual as opposed to straight-forward verbal assaults, Meshuggah are not your typical hard rockers from overseas. Constantly branching into new territory, especially with their release of "Catch Thirtythree" an album based in paradoxes clocking in with one continuous 40 minute track and offering thick experimental grooves, leaving behind most of the metal elements (and their drummer replaced by "The Drumkit from Hell), Meshuggah has become something of an anomaly. And now with their new release, ObZen, they are once again here to push their own envelope.



Debuting at No. 59 on U.S Charts and selling 11,000 copies in the first week, ObZen marks the return of the band's original style. Universally acclaimed, the album gives fans 52 minutes of pure heaviness and complete brutality amongst the nine songs. The album's name is a commentary on people finding Zen within obscurity and obscenity, hence, ObZen. The concept there is completely present in the lyrics, "A new belief-system/ Salvation found in vomit and blood/ where depravation, lies/ corruption, war and pain is God" from the title track. This is really the type of thing we have come to expect from this Swedish quintet in their 20 plus years on the scene.

Their newest effort can almost being seen as backtracking to the days of earlier albums such as 1995's Destroy, Erase, Improve or 1998's Chaosphere. But with the ever evolving sound and the guitarist's new preference for eight strings instead of the seven strings used with earlier recordings, ObZen falls nothing short of a thrash masterpiece for the modern metal-head.

Brace yourself for something unlike we have heard before with Meshuggah’s ObZen brought to us by Nuclear Blast Records.