worst / Die alone, honey/you don’t need
them.”
Appearing 12/16 at Metro, Chicago.
– Jason Scales
Continued from page 40
6
MESSUGAH
The Violent Sleep Of Reason
(Avalon)
HELMET
Dead To The World
(earMUSIC)
Helmet, certainly not dead to the world,
just won’t go away. And that’s a good thing.
The band’s eighth album since 1989 is another uptempo alternative metal effort that
showcases singer/songwriter/guitarist Page
Hamilton’s catchy tunesmithing. The chorus
of “Bad News”--“all news is bad news”-seems to reflect the tenor of the times, doing
so in a repetitive pop rock way. The guitar
work on “Red Scare” and “Drunk In The
Afternoon” displays more of the edgy and
groovy Helmet swagger first set down on
1992’s definitive LP, Meantime.“Green Shirt”
is a throwaway, quirky song, out of place
amid the tight riffing and discordant lead
guitar style of Helmet’s usual sound. “Die
Alone” better showcases Hamilton’s crisp yet
distorted guitar work, as he disdainfully
delivers the lyrics, biting off each word in
frustration: “Last to first, people are the
44 illinoisentertainer.com december 2016
Meshuggah is, in a word, otherworldly.
The aesthetic of their latest album – the
eighth in a 25-plus year career, heavily resembles H.R. Giger’s alien surrealism style, furthering the extreme Swedish metal band’s
exploration of futuristic themes and sounds.
Off-kilter, syncopated rhythms and frequent
time changes, done with maximum percussion and riffage, disorient the listener on the
best of tracks. “Monstrocity” builds chaotically until a downward spiral riff progression
repeats with singer Jens Kidman deliberately
barking out the syllables “Mo nstro City!” “By
The Ton” is a midtempo beast of a song,
heavy on thudding bass and bordering on
sludge metal. Another repetitious and downward spiral chord progression is mined in
“Ivory Tower,” a warning against putting
faith into false institutions, which has H.P.
Lovecraft-like allusions to inevitable horror:
“The construction is our penance here /
tumorous growth chiseled in white / when
the darkness comes to slay the day / enters
horrors that you’ll be wishing away.”
“Stifled” is another midtempo track that
shows a slightly groovier side to the band’s
brutality. But the title track, opening track
“Clockwords,” “Born in Dissonance” and
“Our Rage Won’t Die” (with an opening
drum line that can only be described as a
game of Whack-a-Mole) will satisfy the fans
who prefer uptempo shredding.
– Jason Scales
9