Meshuggah - Alive (DVD)
Until now, Meshuggah has had poor visual representation. The band’s album covers are ugly. Its videos range from self-parodic (“New Millennium Cyanide Christ”, “Rational Gaze (Mr. Kidman Delirium Version)”) to cheesy CGI (“Shed”, “Rational Gaze (Official Version)“) to downright baffling (“Bleed”, “Rational Gaze (First Version)“). Perhaps such futility at matching image to sound is apt. Meshuggah has crafted its own sonic language, for which typical metal visuals would be inadequate.
Alive (Nuclear Blast, 2010), Meshuggah’s first concert DVD, offers the band’s most compelling visual imagery to date. Instead of engaging the band through its abstraction (which would lead to things like cheesy CGI), it portrays the band as humans. Concert selections from different cities alternate with interview segments. This avoids the monotony that can arise from watching a band continuously in the same setting. It also offers glimpses of touring life, from meeting fans to seeing the world from a bus window.
But it isn’t a human interest story. If anything, it cements Meshuggah’s image as a machine. The concert selections are in color, while the interview segments are in no-nonsense black & white. Unlike most band DVD’s, Alive has no tour hijinks, and it does not wax rhapsodic about fans or the road. Meshuggah’s members come off as professionals who care deeply about their craft and are inured to the sacrifices of touring. I don’t think this DVD has a single laugh in it.
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Yet it is a cause for joy. The Meshuggah feeling — deep, percussive, abrasive, yet hypnotic — comes through, perhaps with even higher fidelity than the band’s records. Meshuggah albums have been up and down production-wise, but Alive resounds with the heaviness of the band’s custom eight-string guitars and the rawness (raw for Meshuggah, anyway) of live recordings.
Just as importantly, it looks great. The camera work is full of impressively atypical framing. One shot places the band in the background with some water bottles in the foreground; another starts as a mass of hair, then reveals a guitarist as he lifts his head from the lens. Lighting is incisive throughout, and the band accents its music with dramatic bodily movements. The guitarists do slow, synchronized squats; vocalist Jens Kidman does a sort of epileptic robot dance. Meshuggah is usually described as cerebral, but its odd meters add up to something quite physical. Metal shows engage the eye, the ear, and the occasional elbow. Meshuggah now has a high-quality document of this.
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