In the Eye of the Storm

Their tunes have been compared to algebra, with gnarled riffs and tangled rhythms in place of complex coefficients and polynomials.

On the surface, it seems like some heady stuff: heavy metal as number theory, math class with long hair and a short temper.

But the dudes in Swedish battering ram Meshuggah beg to differ, and for the most part, they have a point.

Upon first listen, their repertoire sounds like a 10-car pileup, a jumble of twisted metal, with perpetually shifting tempos, left-field guitar solos that sound as if they were beamed in from another dimension and coarse vocals that are like sandpaper on an open wound.

But beneath it all is a persistent groove and sturdy songwriting hidden in the eye of a tornado of instrumental malevolence.

It's progressive but palatable.

"I think people tend to focus too much on how complex things are," Meshuggah drummer and primary lyricist Tomas Haake says from a tour stop in San Francisco. "We don't consider those things when we write music. We write whatever appeals to us, and that we find challenging. Of course, in doing so, we usually end up writing songs that are, to a lot of people, kind of complex. But still, it's not really our aim. We aim to make good songs."

To this end, the band's latest disc, the recently released "Obzen," is a shade more digestible than the band's last effort, the impenetrable "Catch 33," which was one album-length, 47-minute song divided into 13 dense passages.

Dark and demanding, the record was a thrash metal labyrinth that listeners had to try and find their way through. Making it through the album in a single sitting was a true test of one's mettle, like running a marathon through a minefield.

This time around, Meshuggah has streamlined things a bit, coming with songs just as elaborate as ever and full of hairpin turns, but broken down into more immediate chunks.

"What we put up as the guidelines for this album, the only ones that we had, was that we kind of wanted this album to be more live-related with a lot of different tracks on it," Haake says. "We tried really hard to give an individual uniqueness to each track, so that each track has an individual vibe compared to the others on the album."

The band's sound is largely defined by perpetual motion: The guitars move in unorthodox cycles and loud, prominent bass lines ricochet through the songs like buckshot.

It's all tethered to fleeting, obtuse melodies that come from the guitars, not the vocals, in the form of jagged shards of tunefulness.

"A lot of the times, those melodies can be really simple, but over more complex music, they kind of stand out," Haake says. "They don't really join in with all the craziness that's going on. Two notes sometimes, just laying on top, really promoting the 4/4 beat, that's something that we've been doing more and more of."

Just as striking as the songs on "Obzen" is the album's artwork, a controversial depiction of a nude, androgynous figure with three arms splattered in blood.

According to Haake, the image dovetails with the lyrical thrust of the album.

"There is somewhat of a thematic thread that ties in with the title and the artwork and all that," he says. "Part of that is meant to suggest that there is a certain amount of inherent evil in man. With the cover, you have the three bloodied hands that are turned so they actually make an arc of sixes, and the lotus position is suggesting that mankind has found its balance in bloodshed and warfare and violence."

As such, "Obzen" offers much to ruminate on -- musically and thematically. The band's works are like heavy metal jigsaw puzzles that necessarily take time to try and piece together and bring into focus.

This effort-intensive style of aggressiveness has spawned its own subgenre, often dubbed math metal, of which Meshuggah is a leading proponent, whether they like the term or not -- they don't.

To hear Haake tell it, when it comes to this bunch, it's all about the song -- even if said song sounds like a prison riot has broken out in your living space.

"We hear a lot of bands that are at least in the vicinity of what we're doing, and they don't really consider the songs," Haake says. "They want to push so much technical stuff into each song, that what they do in the process is hack those songs up into bits, where you get too much of a stop and go kind of thing.

"That's why we play this music around a 4/4 beat, to be able to have that straightforward high-hat or cymbal that keeps you able to groove with the music," he continues. "Even though not all people understand that or hear that, that kind of energy and intent and flow carries across I think."

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0476.