Meshuggah - I [EP]

Still blown away by this song. It's masterful.

Whenever I want to show someone examples of insane, creative, innovative, mind-blowing metal music, I put this EP on. The first minute and 30-some seconds are enough to make you want to put it on pause and catch your spinning head. The rest is a gut-pummeling flurry of metal madness. Tomas Hakke said in an interview that they won't play it live because it's so random and crazy (paraphrasing). But i'd dare say it's not random in a bad way. The whole song (EP) flows together nicely. The randomness Mr. Hakke may be refering to is in some of the passages where there are no repeating parts, no breaks, no time...just... It's crazy.

Another aspect of the EP I enjoy is that it compliments Meshuggah's Catch 33 album quite well (IMO). I consider the two sister 'albums'. What is really strange is that Catch 33 is cut into 13 tracks but feels like it should be half that (because many songs are basically the same song but the masters felt the need to break them up), and 'I' feels like it should be many tracks but is only one.

Overall 'I' is a must-have for Meshuggah fans. It's fast, crazy, proggresive and epic. It should be noted that it is well mastered and has a great studio sound (as opposed to some of thier earlier releases). If you don't have it, get it!

Not exactly well thought out music (the band have said this themselves), but it shows what this band is capable of and they certainly can create some very original sounds. This EP is precursor to a lot of the riffs on the albums that came after it.

Holy shit.

Not looking for well-thought out music if this is the end result. That ending riff is one of the coolest ever.

Amazing EP, just got my copy of the remastered limited edition in the mail today, and it's a bona fide masterpiece.

Almost impossible to play metal music!!!
I don't know why I was laughing hysterically at the time of listening!
Amazing musicianship.

Not sure what they were thinking changing the intro in the remastered version. When you are familiar with the song already, the change is jarring and off-putting. Remastering is fine but don't George Lucas it!

They changed the intro? I don't hear anything different.

Great album, but that extended ambient section puts me off quite a bit.

Greatness

One of my favourite releases from Meshuggah. 9.0/10 for me.

I was screaming in the first ten minutes and if I was around people they would have thought I was crazy. It was horrible, they were like emotionless robots playing instruments.