I never used to like Meshuggah, I just didn’t “get it”. Then I was watching an interview with Thomas Haake and he made a throwaway comment about every instrument being a rhythm instrument, including the vocals. It sounded interesting so I listened again with that mind-frame and it clicked. My brain exploded and I’ve never looked back.
He said his band "is a percussive unit" & I believe his short description of his band could help newcomers quickly easily *get* Meshuggah. Doesn't mean they'll like or love this band, but at least they'll *get* it.
I took a shitload of psychedelics in high school and got stuck listening to Catch 33, front to back. The next day I went out and spent almost $80 buying every Meshuggah CD I could find at best buy. It truly is one of the most tangible life transformations (not just musical) I had ever experienced. This band is by far my favorite, among allot of different stuff. Ever since I “got it,” I can look back and see a huge change in every facet of my life. It’s just very personal, it’s dark music but not brutal. “It’s the darkness of the universe.”
It's actually Tomas. I legit didn't know this until watching an interview the other day. I guess brains are so used to the name Thomas we all just filled in the H in Tomas
Similar thing happened to me though on acid. I never liked messhugah, then while tripping on acid, one of the songs messhugah popped up and I realised that every instrument is actually a rhythm instrument...and from then onwards my journey into polymeters started
As someone who's self taught and struggles to read music, this riff-centric counting is how I count most naturally. Really cool to see your thoughts on this.
30+ years of untrained metal guitar here and this is how I hear nearly all of music. I always felt like I live in a different world than "real" musicians.
Absolutely. Meshuggah is no respecter of traditional notation...it's about numbers, sure, but probably more about patterns, shapes, schemes, and (discordant) systems. And they still do that in a more..."integrated", coherent, artistic way than all the "djent" bands they so heavily influenced.
No wonder Tomas recently gave an interview saying this track may never be played live. Goodness gracious. Great point on this challenges the art form it, and we are lucky to be alive to experience this. Cheers
I tried to quad track this just to see how hard it is to play tight. I consider myself a very tight hard working player of 5 years and boy I thought it was gonna be hard but it was HARD HARD.
@@YogevGabay Also, you'll have a slight head start on I because Fredrik put his chart of the opening section on Instagram a while back, but good luck with the rest ;)
You know, after the first few listens of Immutable I started thinking "Uh oh...Meshuggah is finally starting to sound a little uninspired to me." It just felt a bit like they were starting to run out of ideas and reinvent the wheel. It wasn't until watching these latest MayShuggah videos that I remembered why Meshuggah is so important and why I started listening to them in the first place. It requires attention and some active listening to really grasp what makes them so cool and fun and ground-breaking. Now I always hear something different and can truly appreciate the new album. Thank you, Yogev (and thank you, Meshuggah!)
It still is a little uninspired though. A few rhythm quirks here and there doesn't mean the album has a totally different sound than their previous album. Especially since they talked about it having different sonic albums leading up to the release (there are some nice little breaks here and there but it's not a totally different sound). It's still a good album and I still listen to it.
@@Jazzguitar00yeap def would agree.. its still an awesome album but not much of it is ‘something new’, the only thing possibly making them unique is input from the bass player which i feel are the stand out tracks here n the violent sleep album, where as Marten just straight out writes bangers
@@Jazzguitar009 months late, but I’ll say that with each album they are the same but also very different. You can feel the differences between Immutable and TVSOR. Immutable is easily their most dynamic effort since Destroy Erase Improve and there is a focus on melody. It’s also their most thrash oriented album since Chaosphere. Lots of 7 string riffs. It also seems to be mostly focused on songwriting/atmosphere vs complexity. TVSOR’s focus was on complex riffs, unexpected song structures, and a raw feel helped obviously by the presence of them tracking drums, bass, a rhythm guitar track and vocals live all at once. It has a very blue almost cold presence. Immutable feels red and very warm. I myself prefer TVSOR, but I don’t think Immutable is uninspired. It just puts its focus into other things that are a more cerebral.
This is amazing work, just plain amazing and enormous I, as a Meshuggah fan really really am grateful for these videos. As I have said in other comment, your work is too much for us simple mortals. THANK YOU A part 2 with the other riff would be amazing 🖤🤘
Dear lord, what a breakdown! This song - the the entire album - is just nuts. I genuinely appreciate your comment at the end: that even if you don't like this type of music, it's great to be able to dig into what they're doing with song building, because it is unlike anything that I have ever seen anyone do.
Took a good 40 - 50 hours including EVERYTHING. Figuring it out, thinking how to present it, deleting script #1, writing script #2, filming everything and editing. This one took a LOOOOOOONG time
Haven't finished the video quite yet but a couple of things I want to get down here before I forget... The way you describe the rotating notes that don't match up with the structure of the riff is precisely why the solo section of Pineal Gland Optics used to be my favourite Meshuggah riff... Until Phantoms did that idea for half a song. Blew me away. Also interesting to note that, for me, the 4/4 here is really intuitive and it's the ludicrous use of seemingly random kick drums that make this song peak Meshuggah for me, exactly the challenging memorisation task that I fell in love with learning my first Meshuggah songs back in 02. Love it. Back to the video.
Another drummer here- and I agree, the obvious 4/4 groove here is more present than most Meshuggah songs- but the rotation of accenting makes it one of the funkiest grooves I have ever heard. Simultaneously intuitive and super hard to understand.
I wanted to send a comment to @yogev but let's put it as an answer here: maybe not knowing much about what the riff is helps to feel the 4/4. It reminds me of Bleed at 1'49" («Malfunction…») and the verse of Clockworks where I loose the 4/4 if I follow the riff. Hope my new understanding thanks to this vid will not erase my 4/4 feeling!!!
@@christophegragnic8681 100% on "losing the 4/4 in Clockworks if you pay attention to the riff". When I first heard "Phantoms", the actual "riff" itself, sounds like a "ghost note pattern" -- just riffing AROUND a groove, rather than actually "being a riff" -- that's how my "ears perceived it". But I was able to bob along in 4/4 with zero problems, first time, until the ridiculous ending, lol.
Super interesting discussion! For me, for some reason, this one is harder than others. Maybe being a drummer? maybe i t just hits me differently? so I don't have that problem with clockworks or almost any other song. Which doesn't really SAY anything. It doesn't mean I'm better or worse, just different I guess ?
@@YogevGabay Yeah man, I get a kick reading/listening to people's takes on how they interpret Meshuggah's music. It's wild how many different people have different takes. For example, it took me a long-ass time to keep track of the 4/4 through the middle bit of clockworks. Shed, too, springs to mind. I know the 4/4 is there and if I really concentrate I can pick it out, but it's not how I feel the tune at all.
Your videos are always incredible I wrote a riff once where the rhythm and notes played diverged and followed their own rules and it was so satisfying. It was more like a logic sequence. I've never been able to do it again but always tried. Then they release this absolute monster of a track *Quits guitar
The verse riffs in “Dancers” has the same harmonic and rhythmic “misalignment” on guitar. It’s a 10-beat rhythmic pattern but it takes 30 beats to repeat completely. Makes for a fun riff to play, especially when it’s based off the half-whole diminished scale and it bounces around whole-tone intervals a minor 3rd apart from each other.
Due to a reform on 2022 calendar, this month of May will count 53 days with a reminder of13 hours. Which would allow Yogev to do about 3 other Maysshuggah videos 😄 Thks for your work Mr Gabay, your videos are really both intertaining and inspiring !
Phantoms really stood out to me when Immutable first dropped. It still stands out, and watching this makes me glad that it caught my ear early. These guys don't get enough credit for the brilliance that they hide in their songs. Thankfully, Yogev helps make sense of a lot of it. So, thank you, Yogev, and thank you Meshuggah.
I wasn't sure how i felt about this album until your break downs. And my God this can't be easy, so I appreciate all the time and energy you put into these.
So my question is: how do they even get CLOSE to keeping this straight without you making them clever poster board breakdowns for them to put on the stage when they play live? 😂
I am not a music theory expert & even my lamen ears can hear Meshuggah must be breaking at least 1 rule in this song. What's truly amazing is, I doubt its a conscious effort. You are going to talk about I/Eye soon?? YOU'RE a MADMAN 😮😱
Duuuuuuude! Just… duuuuude! Love your videos and enjoy watching your channel grow. I remember being blown away by DEI in 1995. Then Nothing floored me in 2002. Then Catch 33 became my desert island album. Then comes fucking Obzen!!! And now I’m still being blown the fuck away all these years later. Eternally grateful for these sonic time travellers. 🙏🙏🙏
OMFG! The time you have put into this! And the reward it is to watch the synched up playthrough! 🔥 I really appreciate how you changed the perspective to the “riff sight” and it still makes sense! Kudos and cheers from Denmark 🍻🤘🏻
It's hilarious that there are some Meshuggah songs I must have listened to what, hundreds of times maybe, yet I'm still not exactly sure where the beat lies or where things repeat.
when I am listing to this song I naturally follow the melodic content of the riff, and the rhythmic content feels all messed up. It makes so much sense when looking at it from a drummers perspective.
that was mind blowing. thank you. so excited about “i” being the next one on your radar, i’ve been listening to it on repeat in a last couple of weeks.
I’m likely to watch this video every day, for the next month. Each watch thru, something new clicks. PART 2 PLEASE, with that epic breakdown outro thing. Sorry I didn’t become Patreon supporter before yesterday!
I learn so much from your videos, thank you!! Notice how unlike 99% of Meshuggah songs the kick does not follow the guitar pattern, which in this particular case adds even more to the disorienting nature of the song.
They've had unconventional song structures since way earlier works, but yeah changing sections mid-riff and keeping the riff going is new. I wish you did some analyzing on the last part of the song, the way the drums and guitars phase against each other sometimes make the whole thing very groovy and then it gets out of it again... Weird stuff!
I would like to thank you, on behalf of Rabbits everywhere, for your advice to leave their holes alone. There's a common misconception that Rabbit holes are big and wandering, but they are not and it's frankly disturbing for the Rabbit. ...Rabbit Warrens can be quite big and winding, but as you correctly point out, a Rabbit's hole is no-one's business.
This is great. I spent hours myself trying to analyze this tune. I looked at it from a different POV, so I found my own patterns that were also quite complicated. Meshuggah is coming to my area in September and I'll be there. I'm just going to bet they won't attempt this track live!
the gigs i´ve roadied/ set up for them, during those - they had their own written setlists and then all of the dudes had a string of numbers above the song names. suppose thats a reminder of divisions?
The Berklee Indian Ensemble reminds me of the Shwesmo (and you!) song Digital Elephants! That 'dut' - ting is awesome! Most definitely going to check out the album when it releases! Also, amazing breakdown! This is a beast of a video!!
Phantoms is my favorite Meshuggah song. It's so complex, heavy and addicting. When I'm listening to Immutable I tend to replay the song two to three times in a row. The end is haunting and extremely beautiful. Love those crazy Swedes!
I hyperfocus for his explaination, all 17 minutes of it. Every time I follow it perfectly, and every time it breaks down as soon as I try to apply it to my listening. This song is insane, this band is other-worldly
That’s because it’s in 4/4. There’s a swing feel to parts of it because a lot of notes a played on the “and”. But it is in fact in 4/4 just like all other meshuggah songs.
@@eggheadjibar3264 this isen't really true and is super dependant on how you want to think about it. most meshuggah songs have a back beat in 4/4 played by half of Tomas Haake and sometimes one of the other instruments will be playing in 4/4 too but nearly every guitar part the band has ever written has been in a different meter this is how polyrhythm and polymeter work. lets say they have a verse that is 8 bars long they wright a riff they like in some crazy meter that fits into it 6 and a third times and then put a fat back beat in 4/4 under it to make the mosh happen and at the end of 8 bars of the back beat the stop the riff where ever it is and move to the next section. that's why the guitar riffs phase with the backbeat in like all there music, so its not that the songs are / aren't in 4/4, parts of the music are while other parts that are not are layered on top to make that meshuggah sound happen . the use of this technique in my opinion is why meshuggah have become so popular, if the song couldn't be headbanged too and was all out there rhythmic ideas with no grounding for people to feel as familiar it would have been practically impossible for them to achieve there well deserved success .
As many have said, thanks for making this album more interesting by breaking it down for us! Maybe it's just me, but one of the more prominent rhythmic or perhaps melodic ideas is how they accent every third group (at least initially, after a while it changes around a bit) creating yet another layer of polyrhythm-ish.
You could also divide the groups of 7 into 5 and 2. I think that would look cleaner on paper since the sections that start there always start on that 2 inside of the seven. That also explains why they end it on a 5
I believe the idea of the melodic line repeating in a different form than the rhythm (ie 3 notes against a rhythm cycle of 4 notes) is called an isorhythm. I first heard Meshuggah doing this at one of the last riffs of Sum from C33. I thought it was genius but then learned its been used first hundreds of years ago. Still, its pretty genius!
Oh I should also note that the messy guitar part at the end, as another concept of symmetry is an odd amount of notes, and when it repeats, it mirrors the opposite string its on. For example, if the melody is on the E string, D string, then E string, the repeat is the same fret but on the D string, then E, then D string.
Another well edited and very well explained video, thank you so much dude that looked like a hell of a job. I finally learned the guitar part to Do Not Look Down thanks to your videos, and I'm not even mad that a drummer showed me how to play it 😎
You should check out intro auto they have some dope riffs as well, one that's really interesting to break apart is the ending riff of "digital gerrymandering"
