Meshuggah at the Best Buy Theater

Vocalist Jens Kidman in 1987 Sweden formed extreme metal band Meshuggah, adoptinging the Yiddish word for "crazy." The original band split and was reconceived with the addition of guitarist Fredrik Thordendal. Drummer Tomas Haake joined in 1990, and rhythm guitarist Mårten Hagström joined in 1992. The band has gone through numerous bassists, with the position currently being held by Dick Lövgren since 2004. Meshuggah has released seven studio albums, Meshuggah's latest studio album, Koloss, was released on March 23, 2012.

Meshuggah closed its 25 Years of Musical Deviance tour with a sold-out Best Buy Theater tonight. Prior to this 25th anniversary tour, Meshuggah invited fans to help curate the set list through an online poll where fans could vote on songs they would like to hear on the tour. As a result, Meshuggah performed songs that dated back to 1989. The band opened with "Future Breed Machine," and pleased the audience with "New Millennium Cyanide Christ", "Bleed" and a dozen other songs from the catalogue, closing with a three-song suite of "Minds Mirrors", "In Death - Is Life" and "In Death - Is Death" from the 2005 concept album Catch Thirtythree. The band fused death metal, thrash metal, progressive metal and jazz fusion elements with complex, poly-metered song structures, poly-rhythmic syncopation, asymmetrical signatures, rapid key and tempo changes and neo-jazz chromatics. Kidman's gutteral growls were spine-tingling, the music was abrasively harsh, and the seemingly discordant and cacophonous guitar leads made the songs even more avant-garde and experimental. The result was unique, challenging and very, very metal.

Visit Meshuggah at www.meshuggah.net.