Destroy, Erase, Improve pretty much did what it set out to do. It took heavy metal, specifically the burly metallithrash that Umeå, Sweden’s Meshuggah offered on their first LP, Contradictions Collapse, broke it down, wiped it away, and made it better. The band’s second album, issued through Nuclear Blast in 1995 — a 30th anniversary that will almost certainly be celebrated in some way next year — is among the most landmark releases in metal, regardless of subgenre. Hell, it’s its own subgenre. They only called it “djent” because to say “that thing Meshuggah does where the time signatures bend reality” would both be too on the nose and take too long to say. Certainly it’s implied, and for good reason.

At 46 minutes, Destroy, Erase, Improve is shorter than a lot of what was happening at the time deep in the peak of the CD era, and that relative brevity continues to serve how intense it feels when it hits the ear. The band comprised of vocalist Jens Kidman, guitarists Fredrik Thordendal (lead, also synth) and Mårten Hagström (rhythm), bassist Peter Nordin and drummer Tomas Haake (also responsible for most of the lyrics) found a niche in an intricacy of rhythm and timing that simply hadn’t been done before in an aggressive-music context.

They didn’t invent playing in ‘odd’ time signatures by any means, but they did something genuinely new with it. That it would go on to basically be the cornerstone of a subgenre unto itself — I’d add 1998’s Chaosphere (discussed here) to that list, and some of the band’s later work — but as much as Neurosis‘ style became the basis for post-metal, Meshuggah informed metalcore in the aughts, as every breakdown was really just trying to be ‘the Meshuggah part’ and everyone knew it, and their influence still resonates in modern metal more broadly. Not only did they create their own style for others to emulate as invariably would happen, but they affected multiple microgenres under the ‘heavy music’ umbrella.

The album’s no secret, of course. It’s one of the most celebrated releases of its generation, and I seriously doubt that anything I say about it will either never have been said before or provide some new insight as to how Meshuggah took on the direction they did, but from where I sit, comfortably on the couch that used to belong to my wife’s grandmother, the heat on for a chilly November morning, in socks, the lesson of Destroy, Erase, Improve feels an awful lot like it’s teaching the value of finding your place.

In this case, it’s an angry place. Destroy, Erase, Improve is immediate in its violent intention — ‘destroy’ comes first — and “Future Breed Machine” readily displays the characteristic temporal twists that would come to define the band’s impact, along with a kind of jangly gallop that offsets those undulations. Like any decent literature, Destroy, Erase, Improve teaches you how to read it as it unfolds. I don’t necessarily mean that the average person hearing it is going to start counting measures. Maybe you latch onto those parts as a life raft amid the tumult surrounding of tones that would only grow more tectonic with passing years finding their preface in the mighty chug of “Soul Burn.” Or maybe you follow Kidman‘s vocals, or Haake‘s drums — the hi-hat or the snare can assist if you’re looking to nod, see “Beneath” or the penultimate highlight “Suffer in Truth”  — or maybe you just let go and it unfolds in a wash over you. Maybe that’s your zen. I’m jealous if so.

But whatever route they take to get there, Meshuggah‘s vision of progressivism — because that’s kind of what any search for sonic/stylistic individualism is going to lead to, isn’t it?; a chase toward an ideal centered around deeper consideration of one’s work? — remains singular in its impact. There’s very little in the world that sounds both as intelligent and devastating. Destroy, Erase, Improve is this at its rawest, and “Future Breed Machine,” “Inside What’s Within Behind,” “Suffer in Truth” and others here are heralds for the path the band were putting themselves on through the material. Even in the three-minute ambient interlude “Acrid Placidity” — prescient of some of what Thordendal would do in his solo work — the album never lets its audience get fully away from the sense of things being off-kilter, weird in untraceable ways, and undeniably distinctive.

That Meshuggah went on to become one of metal’s most singularly crushing bands — their latest album, Immutable, came out in 2022; they’ve slowed down a little and that’s just fine by me because I like slow heavy metal music thank you very much — is immaterial to Destroy, Erase, Improve in the face of the risk the band were taking at the time. And to be sure, it was a few years before what was being heard was processed into an influence and Meshuggah really got ‘their due’ — recall there was no mobile social media at the time; fandom didn’t happen instantaneously as it can now — but not only are these 10 songs executed with precision, they’re poised even as they hit their hardest or explore the far reaches of where metal had previously been.

Those reaches turned out to be the place for themselves that the band were finding. They’ve dwelled there since, to largely undeniable results — they have enough fans that individual records are debated, but speaking broadly there’s no getting past their impact — and continued to refine and reshape what they do while retaining the inhuman superposition Destroy, Erase, Improve lays out. I know this kind of thing isn’t what’s always covered around here, and I know not everybody gets into harder and more extreme sounds, but you should know that I’m not trying to gatekeep. If you’ve never heard this record at all, I’d say put it on just for the experience of being able to say you heard it. If you know it, it’s its own excuse. For me, it’s unto itself, which 29 years later still very much feels like what they were going for at the time.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

6:49AM now. I woke up at 5:30 with the alarm. Actually, I woke up at 1, then at 3, then at 5:30 with the alarm. I guess. It was a stupid kind of sleep. I’d been setting the alarm for a luxurious 6:30AM, because since The Pecan is in school, I have more time during the day to write, but since the time change a couple weeks ago — the ‘fall back’ in the US’ ridiculous ‘spring ahead, fall back’ like we can’t just fucking leave it alone? really? — she’s been getting up at around 6:20 where that had been an hour later. The time differential wasn’t a ton, but 40 minutes to an hour of conscious, focused, low-distraction writing time isn’t nothing to me.

So the experiment this morning was to see what my effect on her waking up was. As I’m banging around half-conscious through my morning routine, making coffee and tea and taking the dog out, etc., if it’s 6:30, is she at a point close enough to awake anyway that I’m tipping her over? She’s always been up with daylight, which can be brutal. That she’s already slept until nearly seven, and that it’s nearly fully light out, tells me that maybe I am part of what’s been getting her up. It’s kind of academic, I guess, but I’m home a lot these days and I guess that’s where you end up.

If you clicked that Chaosphere link above and read any of that post, or maybe you remember which I’m willing to believe two people do one of whom is my wife, the US political situation is a factor in my choice this week. It was in 2020 as well. I’ve been thinking about some of the differences between now and then, and mostly it works out to it’s sadder this time. In 2016, it was easy to be angry. There were protests in the streets, a million women getting out in the cold to proclaim themselves against an acknowledged sex offender being made president. This time everything just feels numb.

The absurd cabinet picks, the impossible-to-ignore parade of hateful bullshit. Yeah, I get sad thinking people actually voted for this, because it’s not like nobody knew what was coming. The country has been through this before, and people collectively decided that yeah, we need more of that as a nation. I wasn’t a huge fan of Harris either, or Biden, or Obama once he started drone-bombing civilians in foreign lands, but at least they held the country together. And even if you’re for anarchy, for letting it all go off the rails running up Don Jr.’s nose, how on earth can this be the vision of anarchy that speaks to people?

So yeah, sad. People voting away the rights of others, environmental protections and functional institutions (no, I’m not talking about Congress, but the lower-level bureaucracies of American government function just fine and employ tens of thousands) just to be mean. That is fucking sad. I should be moving on from that, to righteous anger or whatever impotent-ass stage of grief is next, but no.

Needless to say, the news yesterday that The Onion bought InfoWars was a bright light in all that encompassing dark. It’s been a lot of weed and Zelda in my downtime. Escapism. Fine. Give me a few more weeks to get my feet back under me in this already-was-awful–and-is-about-to-get-worse reality. And if you voted Republican and your still reading this because it thinks it makes you civil or some self-affirming garbage, when they take away my daughter’s right to exist and persecute your LBGT friends, neighbors and family — because everyone’s got ’em — remember it was all worth it to own the libs like a spiteful 12-year-old shithead.

A little anger peeking through, maybe. See? It’s a process. But should you require any extra leftist tears to sate whatever self-indulgent nazi — vote for a fascist you’re a fascist; disagree and be wrong — dopamine chase you’re on, I’ve got plenty.

To the rest, a great and safe weekend. May your blinders hold up as it all continues to unravel, and may you get through the day without having to hang your head at the realization of the moment in history you occupy. Don’t forget to hydrate!

FRM.

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Tags: Destroy Erase Improve, Meshuggah, Meshuggah Destroy Erase Improve, Nuclear Blast Records, Sweden, Umeå

This entry was posted on Friday, November 15th, 2024 at 10:15 am and is filed under Bootleg Theater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.