Meshuggah play a style of music unlike any other. Their complexity is not due to them performing well; rather it has to do with the unusual time signatures used in their songs. Don’t expect to ever hear something in 4/4 at 120 BPM in one of their songs (unless it’s in an odd number of bars). What you should expect is to hear the guitars, bass, and even the drums playing in three completely different time signatures and only syncing up every 12 bars. It might even hurt your head to listen to but it’s all mathematically correct. With that in mind, try to imagine the difficulty in performing such a feat live. Sounds hard, but Meshuggah has been doing it for years and they have archived some recent tour dates on a new live DVD. The performances were recorded in Tokyo, New York, Toronto, and Montreal. As cool as it is to have Canada represented in over half of the songs, it may have been a better choice to use only the Tokyo footage. The stage in Tokyo was the largest, and best of all they had a camera on a track in front of the barricades moving back and forth, catching everything onstage up-close. Even if the other cities had better audio recordings, the visual appeal of the Tokyo footage would have made up for it. The only visual advantage of the smaller venues is that the stage was better lit because the lights were not spread as wide apart. Between each song was backstage footage and brief interviews, some relating to performing a show, some related to songwriting. It is a relatively enjoyable DVD about a very unique band. If you have never heard Meshuggah before, you probably should, not because you might like them but rather they’re a good point of reference. (Nuclear Blast, www.nuclearblastusa.com) Paul Nordin
Winnipeg music & culture since 1989