The Summary Judgment Reviews:
Title: Rare Trax
Artist: Meshuggah
Label: Nuclear Blast
Release Date: 8/21/01

Rating: 4 Skulls
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    • Reviewed by Solomon (5/22/02):
    Fans probably already know this, but "meshuggah" is a Yiddish/Hebrew term meaning "crazy," and the band's music isn't too far away from that. Not going so far as to call it a train wreck, 'Rare Trax' is futher confirmation of Meshuggah's aggressive, jarring, topsy-turvy approach to inventing metal. Since the band was too damn lazy to make a new record (they'd admit it, too), the nutty troupe from Sweden decided to tide us over with a collection of demos, rarities and remixes. "War," apparently a recent track, kicks things off in high-speed fashion. "Cadaverous Mastication" (yummy!) and "Sovereigns Morbidity" (off the muy-rare 'Psykisk Testbild') from 1989 show the band in a thrashier frame of mind, and even Jens Kidman sounds like a grittier Hetfield/Lemmy, but the basic chaotic framework of the Meshuggah mind is still there. Heh, heh, I even dig the little "Ride The Lightning" rip-off in "Internal Evidence." Oddly enough, the riffing and guitar tone on a few of the tracks sound like Believer, a Christian prog-thrash band (?!). I seriously doubt there's a real connection, but an interesting point, anyway. "Cadaverous" has a very nice clean interlude with a tasty lead from Fredrik Thordendal.

    The older, thrash-inspired material is pretty cool, and makes you want to jump up and bounce off walls. Actually, Meshuggah's music is pretty much always the equivalent of a caffeine overdose, but I think the band has refined their sound and turned it into something better. Modern tracks like "By Emptiness Abducted" (recorded btween DEI and Chaosphere) and the superb, Korny remix of "Concatenation" show the band as a meaner, meatier, down-tuned engine of destruction. In fact, after listening to "Concatenation," I wish the rest of the record sounded just like it. Aside from a few cool guitar noises, "Ayahuasca Experience" is just 4.5 minutes of mind-melting, tonal drool that is best left as the joke it was clearly meant to be. Oh, yeah, and don't forget the nifty CD-Rom bonus material! This stuff is worth a skull or two by itself! Haha, MTV would crap if they saw the LOW-budget video to "New Millennium Cyanide Christ" (weed... us?... nah!). The live "Elastic" suffers from a bit of low lighting, but the clip of Jens headbanging on the shitter is enough to make up for it. P.S. - Bring a dictionary for the song titles.
    4 out of 5

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