Meshuggah - Bleed

If you enjoy your rock and metal like you enjoy being hit by a truck, then we’ve got the Rock Song of the Week for you this week, trust me.

Well, maybe that’s not putting it kindly. Being hit by a truck is pretty high up on most people’s list of things to avoid, after all, which is exactly the opposite of what you should be doing with this track. Ever since their late 80s inception, Meshuggah have been cranking out spine crushing, face melting extreme metal to great effect. It really is the sort of stuff that your parents would call “just noise”, but what do those fuddy-duddies know?

The band hail from Umea, Sweden in that big, lovely area of Northern Europe that exports metal like they can’t get rid of it fast enough. They’ve been pumping out polyrhythms (which, if I’m honest, I still don’t quite understand – something to do with layers!) for three decades and counting without losing any sense of the skull denting heaviness they’re known for, which is impressive in and of itself. But their technical prowess is quite something else. It’s little surprise they’re so renowned for their ability to create music, to the point where they’re frequently names as one of the most influential metal bands of all time. Not bad going for an underground band in an underground genre.

Onto the track itself, then; this one will rattle the teeth in your head if your speakers are good enough. Taken from their 2008 album ObZen, Bleed is a whirlwind full of anvils and aluminium bats that simply does not relent, battering everything in its path with all manner of chugging guitar and double bass drum goodness (seriously, drummer Tomas Haake must have ankles like train carriage couplings) that will have you throwing yourself around your living room/kitchen/the inside of your car when you’re safely parked up from start to finish. And that’s no short time either – at seven and a half minutes long this is a test of endurance for even the most devout pit dweller. Though thankfully, there’s a slightly slower bit in the middle where you can pick up broken vases/rehydrate/wipe all the steam off the car windows.

So with no further standing on ceremony, I implore you to give those luxury mouth bones a good rattling by blasting this week’s track, Bleed, at as loud a volume as you think you can get away with before the neighbours think you’re doing major reconstructive work to the foundation of your house.