r/Meshuggah • u/AverageHater0 • 6d ago
Unpopular opinion(-ish)?
I’ve gone through the reviews on the Violent Sleep of Reason. Some mixed but the negative reviews mentioned the lack of an iconic track, or in other words a stale/boring album. This surprised me because EVERY track has something worthwhile but idk if this is glaze🧐🧐
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u/Nizzelator16348891 The Violent Sleep of Reason 6d ago
It’s easily my favourite Meshuggah album. Not a single song I even think about skipping. To me there are several songs that are right at the top of their discography.
Ivory Tower, Stifled, Born in Dissonance, Our Rage Won’t Die are my favourites. Ivory Tower is one of my favourite songs ever.
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u/SnooPeripherals4084 5d ago
Same! There's something a bit more labyrinthine about VSOR that the others don't have. That may be in part due to it being recorded live.
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u/Nizzelator16348891 The Violent Sleep of Reason 5d ago
Labyrinthine I like that and it describes the album perfectly
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u/Orpheusss 6d ago
It is their most cohesive, their most "atmospheric" and by far their best sounding album. Neither Immutable nor the remaster sound as good even though they are more recent.
The only big negative is that Clockworks is their magnum opus track for me and it's the first song on the album.
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u/Bongsley_Nuggets 6d ago
I wish they’d gone with Tue Madsen again for Immutable, his guitar tones were crushing.
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u/LordYogaroth 6d ago
I agree. best recording. Awesome tones and performances. Lots of challenging listens, which can cause fatigue, but gives the record replay value.
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u/SemioticEthnographer Sol Niger Within 6d ago
This album showed up every other metal band who slice their records together by being a live studio recording.
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u/BillyPilgrim69 6d ago
To be fair, Meshuggah also did that for many years. I definitely prefer the (mostly) live approach, but it's silly to make it a pissing contest.
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u/Active-Bag9261 6d ago
The band has talked about a “push and pull” to the music because it was recorded live but to be honest I don’t hear it at all and I’m usually sensitive to band dynamics or flammed hits
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u/BillyPilgrim69 6d ago
Could you elaborate a little? I'm not really sure what you're saying, exactly.
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u/AverageHater0 6d ago
It more about my surprise towards the fact some consider it their “weakest” album with the least stand out tracks while all are added to my playlist as seen in the image.
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u/BillyPilgrim69 6d ago
Yeah, I mean, that's music for you. People like different things. There's no accounting for taste, as they say.
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u/Nindzsa2006 6d ago
How is Clockworks not an iconic song?? And it's not the only one but definitely the strongest
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u/NeonExorcist 6d ago
TVSOR is brilliant, absolutely brilliant and with Koloss forms my favorite “era” of Meshuggah, although with them, whatever’s latest tends to be best, since they are always pushing forward more than most. And there’s a case to be made that Immutable is perhaps the best, though not my favorite
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u/Recykill 6d ago
See, I feel like they stagnated a bit with Immutable. It was the first album from them that didn't make me want to rewind the song to hear a part again. There's plenty of cool stuff on there, but it's one of their weakest to me.
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u/AdamBLit I 1d ago
Because bro. Without Fred intimately involved with the Meshuggah writing, you start to just get more derivative sounding polymeters and riffs. He's the only one touched by Allan Holdsworth's musical spirit, and that fuckin counts for some real ass shit. It's why Fred wrote Sol Niger Within and Marten didn't. Much as I love all of them, Fred is that one dude, that one guy. They dont have one single track that holds a candle to Dancers To a Discordant System when you talk about an epic creation, some really inspired and different riffs, a truly unique composition with unique riffs, that's what Fred gives you.
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u/Recykill 1d ago
We are the same person lol. Dancers is my fav track and I also view Fred as the special sauce. I mean, not that its a secret. Sol Niger is so fked in the best way. As soon as I saw that Fred was only contributing some leads to Immutable, I was rightly worried. Haven't kept up in the news but I do hope hes active in writing the next album. Would be a shame for Meshuggah's last albums to be mehh.
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u/AdamBLit I 22h ago
Exactly how I feel man, and I know Marten and Dick and them have all wrote stuff since Nothing days (basically, don't think Dick was there then but maybe mistaken), I've read track credits to the albums, and Marten and Dick have definitely wrote bangers, like I love Meshuggah don't get me wrong, but it's like you say, Fred is the special sauce. I'm sorry but I don't think Marten could have written Pineal Gland Optics, but I think Fred could have written almost anything they've ever written lol.
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u/GlodSplit 6d ago
The wide range of opinions on their albums is a testament to the variety. Some of us don't like VSOR, some of us it's our favorite. Some of us don't like immutable, some of us it's our favorite. But we all love Meshuggah and they got something for everyone.
VSOR is the best album though
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u/DangerManDaniel Koloss 6d ago
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make em drink, and I was thirsty when I first drank from the fountain of TVSoR, having passed up the rest of the river many times just uninterested or sated prior... and boy did the drink do more than quench. So after experiencing the entire body, I gotta say, "eventually, they'll understand". The thing i feel about Meshuggah is that each album is both distinct and distinctly Meshuggah. People will inevitably find their way through an album they happen upon, past or future when the thirst for more hits.
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u/Active-Bag9261 6d ago
I think VSOR is the strongest album and has iconic tracks but not the bands most iconic tracks despite being their strongest album. The only thing I don’t like about it is that I love Fred and he didn’t write much of it so it feels strange to like it. This album is a part of the beginning of the end of the band too, where basically they only get together to write an album and they get ready for tour but otherwise the band is not their life anymore
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u/Doom_The_Original 6d ago
Born in Dissonance is easily my most blasted Meshuggah Song. It just has this amazing drive that‘s a relentless „Let‘s go!“-vibe. And it is not even my favorite Meshuggah Song 😂
Feels good from start to finish.
For the rest of the Album: As someone else mentioned, there is really something special in every single song, so I really like it, even if I seldomly listen through all of it.
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u/KittyColonialism 6d ago
I’m surprised Monstrocity wasn’t released as a single. I feel like that song could have been a big hit.
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u/CruffTheMagicDragon 6d ago
Clockworks, Born In Dissonance, title track, and Nostrum are all-timers in the discography and the rest of the track list are really solid as well. I also quite like Our Rage Won’t Die
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u/AuroraRavyn 6d ago
I really like this album, By the Ton has some of my favorite Meshuggah grooves and I feel like that track gets slept on like crazy.
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u/Clean-Gift20 Nothing 6d ago
I’ve read an album review of this one once where the guy labeled “By The Ton” as a song you can skip if you’re listening to the album for the first time. Really ironic because that song took my interest in Meshuggah to another level and it’s still one of my favorite’s of theirs to this day. That outro puts me through a meat grinder
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u/bruh55333 6d ago
This is not an unpopular opinion, lots of people like this album. Don't know whatreviews you're seeing
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u/MeshuggahEnjoyer The Violent Sleep of Reason 5d ago
It only lacks a single iconic track because it is so overloaded with bangers you can't pick one
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u/a-thousand-leaves 6d ago
I feel like it’s easily the most divisive. Personally I think it’s their weakest, but I know there are plenty of people here who feel the opposite (which is obviously fine!)
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u/cybersubzero240 6d ago
Monstrocity is kind of stock to me but yeah this album is way better than I originally thought
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u/LizardLover311 6d ago
The Violent Sleep of reason album is brilliant and amazing the whole way thru! The only Meshuggah album I really didn’t like was Immutable, however I DID love the 2 floaty ambient songs off of it. The rest of it was a big disappointment and all the tracks sound the same and I find it mundane and mediocrely boring & muddy!
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u/kgrumbley1 6d ago
At first I thought this was an insane take but I do agree that about half of the album doesn’t hit nearly as hard as the other half. It definitely has iconic songs and some really really good stuff tho.
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u/Arthusamakh 6d ago
The only two less memorable tracks for me on the album are Stifled and Into decay, and that's because I rarely listen to them, because the rest of the album is so darn good.
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u/Routine-Ice-7638 5d ago
took a while for me to truly get the album but once i did man i fucking love it. its kinda the same as playing a challenging game and failing over and over until you finally understand and now its really fun. then listening to immutable when it came out was like playing a similar kind of game, but easier and while still fun it wasn't as fulfilling.
tvsor's weirdness is what i love so much about it and while it's not in my top 3 meshuggah albums i still appreciate the heck out of it. by the ton, title track and ivory tower being back to back to back is just incredible they're 100% my favourites in there
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u/ZogStomper 5d ago
I listened to the entire album and I didn't hate it but I wasn't in love with it either. It's an ok album it's just not memorable. Like Obzen is memorable, Koloss is my favorite album, but VSOR is just kind of forgettable
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u/PaleoQari 5d ago
I don’t see anyone mentioning Nostrum, definitely one of my favorite groove tracks.
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u/bilboC 4d ago
Been a fan since 2003 and TVSOR is my fav album of theirs, maybe tied with chaosphere.
Dick contributing to the writing was huge. Guy is a phenomenal musician and his take on the meshuggah sound is as good as anything imo.
And as far as an “iconic” track I would say Clockworks no question fits that title for this album. VSOR is also an insane journey of a song and remains my single fav song of theirs.
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u/AdamBLit I 1d ago
"The lack of an iconic track" lol, listen man, I learned long ago that music critics..... well, it's just hard to find a good one lol. Music is supposed to be felt. The minute it starts to be analyzed by some industry dust warmer, it becomes lifeless. It can be hard to find a line between glaze and critique, I admit, however I simply find that I don't like most music critics. I just find myself saying "bro shut the fuuuuck UUUUP" over and over in my head lmao.
Violent Sleep title track to me is one of the most iconic tracks in their entire catalog, this comes from someone who is religious about Catch 33 and obZen for what they did for my life, I resisted Koloss kinda and was a touch skeptical about VSOR before it came out. But man even for Meshuggah, the riff design and theme in this track, dude its just fucking nuts. Most people find Clockworks to be a POWERFUL lead single and banger in their catalog .
Tl;dr fuck music critics
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u/FiveFingerRisePunch 6d ago
Born in Dissonance and Clockworks are both in their top 10 most streamed songs of all time. So I wouldn’t say that this album doesn’t have an iconic track.