Estimated reading time: 5 minute(s)
Last night, I went to see Meshuggah live, on their minitour celebrating 25 years of music (with Between The Buried And Me as support). The bands were both in fine form, but it was an odd night, insofar as the band’s conceit of playing a set of material largely in chronological order led to pacing issues. It was intellectually satisfying to sample the band’s songwriting progression unmarred by inconsistent production, but it also made the middle half of the set a bit of a letdown. (Even Jens Kidman remarked, “Glad that’s over.”)
Here’s the setlist from last night’s show:
- Future Breed Machine (Destroy Erase Improve, 1995)
- obZen (2008)
- The Hurt that Finds You First (Koloss, 2012)
- Do Not Look Down (Koloss)
- Cadaverous Mastication (Contradictions Collapse, 1991)
- Greed (Contradictions Collapse)
- Gods Of Rapture (None, 1994)
- Neurotica (Chaosphere, 1998)
- New Millennium Cyanide Christ (Chaosphere)
- Break Those Bones Whose Sinews Gave It Motion (Koloss)
- Bleed (obZen)
- Demiurge (Koloss)
- Straws Pulled at Random (Nothing, 2002)
The encore was Mind’s Mirrors / In Death – Is Life / In Death – Is Death, my favorite section from Catch Thirty-Three (2005).
As an aside, the venue (the Regency Ballroom) is one of my least favorite places to see live music in the Bay Area. Their sound is consistently crap: too much muddy low-end, scalloped to hell and back, and half the drum mics sound like they’re off. I’d considered boycotting the venue altogether, but this ticket was just too special to pass up. Why does this still happen? (It’s especially surprising with Meshuggah, considering how much care they put into their lighting tech for example.) Also, I’ve never not-once heard BTBAM sound good enough in a venue. Sad, really.
