Description

Double album on gold vinyls with gatefold cover. Limited 300 copies

“The Violent Sleep Of Reason”, the band’s eighth full-length studio album, finds Meshuggah building upon their legacy for fearless metal sculpting within the context of extreme metal, but also recapturing some of the magic and excitement specifically within the aspect of performance, finding flow and groove that would be a challenge for any lesser band to locate, given such technical geometric madness at mischievous hand. There’s a distinct methodology, says drum master, writer and spokesman for the band Tomas Haake, that was put into motion to help the band achieve the level of swing the attentive fan will feel as he makes his way through “The Violent Sleep Of Reason”. Basically, there are more natural sounds. On the last few albums, everything’s been kind of fixed and machine-like. For this one, it’s all live takes, something we haven’t done in many, many years. And that definitely goes against the stream of what you see in technical metal. So we went back towards a more old school approach, actually rehearsing and knowing the songs before we would record them. Because over the last few albums, we really didn’t know the songs well enough to play them as a band by the time we were recording them, because of time pressure, politics, income, finances, etc. For the last few albums, we’d record drums first, and then add guitar and everything and make it sound perfect, whereas this time we routined the songs well and were able to do all live takes. Jens was in one room, the guitarists were in one room, Dick was sitting right next to my drum set and he had an amplifier in the next room. So in that sense it’s old school; the methodology is similar to what metal bands were doing in the ‘80s and 90s. And that vibrancy comes out; it’s a very audible difference, sloppier if you will, but at the same time it brings an energy that I personally feel was lacking over the last few albums. They were too perfect – this is less perfect, but in that sense, more alive. The end result is a relentless onslaught of Meshuggah – patented ideas, save for one gorgeous and atmospheric respite, at the close of ‘Stifled.’ Framing the pacing and contours of record, Tomas says, “None of the songs sticks out like ‘Bleed’ did on »obZen«. These songs are over the top. Well, »Koloss« didn’t really have that either. To me, it doesn’t really have hits – it just has really cool songs! (laughs). They’re a little wilder on this album. Dick and I wrote most of the material, and we were kind of going for something that’s nuts. We wanted to hear something that we hadn’t heard ourselves do before.”

Track listing:
1. Clockworks
2. Born In Dissonance
3. Monstrocity
4. By The Ton
5. Violent Sleep Of Reason
6. Ivory Tower
7. Stifled
8. Nostrum
9. Our Rage Won’t Die
10. Into Decay