Meshuggah
The Obsidian Trek

It is not every day we are offered a movie to review, this time it is Meshuggah that does and it is a double CD + DVD or BluRay release we are given. A story of an obsidian trek through Europe, recorded during their European tour as well as the Wacken Open Air. Filmed and directed by French filmer Anthony Dubois, promoted through a website that kept lagging for me so it was impossible to see the movie without interruption as it seemed like the file didn’t buffer like it does on some places. Well, it was like watching all those crap TV-channels with commercials breaks but without the hateful commercial films. But enough on the unreliability of watching things on the web, what about this film and the music?

It is filmed with fast clips, it is also very often seen from a crowd perspective. As much as I actually thought it might be a collection of films from the audience that was put together into one package but the information says nothing about that so I guess it is not so. There are many flashing light and fast paced panning as well, but nothing can really change the fact that the band seem very static on stage. It is almost like they are frozen in one spot and you rather quickly see through the tricks of the photo and realise that wherever the stage we have filmed, it looks the same. They could have made the thing seem more like one show rather than feel like a collection of songs from different events. I also think that the movie is way too dark and I dislike watching poorly lit movies as much as I detest poorly exposed photographs. There are some novel ideas with the filming but the result is less than satisfying I would say.

The visual fails on my part but where it fail the music succeed. The sound is excellent. The songs are great and I think that the band sound better on this than they have done on any of the Meshuggah albums I have heard. They have power and presence in their music and if it wasn’t for the rather drearily filmed thing it would have been a great thing to behold. Now I rather recommend that you buy the music tracks online from iTunes or something like that rather than shelling out for the DVD/BluRay which costs more than a regular album and offers nothing of value over what you get on the CDs.

It could be described as an unimpressive movie with impressive music meaning that the end result is still a good product and I like listening to it. A bit of a paradoxial release to try and write something sane about but I would say that fans of Meshuggah will probably like it a lot and I think many will find it an appealing musical piece. I just wish that the film was better, that they capitalised on what is a fairly good approach. In the end though I am left with a rather good product that could be well worth checking out if you like the band or bands like it.

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