(Andy Synn goes big with the new album from the inimitable, immutable, Meshuggah, out this Friday)
As you may know, if you’ve been hanging around this site for any length of time, we don’t always bother to cover the big names and famous faces.
After all, the big dogs already tend to get more than their fair share of attention and acclaim – since they’re usually the ones with the bigger budgets, the best PR reps, and the most backing – so any coverage we might add would just be a drop in the ocean, relatively speaking.
Plus there’s the fact that, after a certain point, these sorts of bands just become “too big to fail”. No matter what the critics say – most of whom, let’s be honest, don’t want to risk rocking the boat by saying anything negative anyway – their fans are pretty much always going to pre-order their new stuff, so we’d be much better off dedicating our efforts to where, and who, they can actually make a difference.
There are exceptions to this rule, however, and I’m making one today for the new album by Meshuggah.
Not because, as some have already written, it’s “the band’s best album yet” (it’s not) or “a major step in their evolution” (it’s really not… though there are certainly seeds of something…) but because it’s a perfect example of an album which deserves a fair and balanced appraisal but which, due to the impenetrable aura of hype which surrounds the band these days, is unlikely to get it.
