I think that was aimed at me. However, I'm not labeling them a 4/4 band, NOT IN THE LEAST. It would definitely be oversimplifying their music to label them 4/4.
Here's an interview that explains it better and will put all speculation to rest, by the band themselves:
A lot of listeners would probably be shocked to hear that most of your music is in 4/4! What is the twist that you’re putting on things so that people are getting this other impression?
Well, there is definitely more to the music than just 4/4. But the main thing is the 4/4 feel. For us, that’s a very important aspect to it. It helps us in giving the music a certain amount of flow. You can actually -- at least on a good night -- get into a groove. If you want to translate it into being “here’s this number of bars in 23/16” and this last part turns into thirteen sixteenth notes and starts over. That’s not how we perceive our music. It’s just a matter of that last one flowing in an odd number over the 4/4 beat. [Pieslak’s article does not, in fact, contradict this, and underscores Haake’s point with charts and analysis that detail the band’s use of “metric superimposition.” -- Ed.] Therefore, the 4/4 that we write and play around is the most important aspect. I usually play eighth notes on the hi hat all the time. So everyone in the band can headbang.
A
nd that’s important. It’s kind of like a sine curve. If the 4/4 is a line going through the music, everyone else is doing things around that, and also that everyone is doing things in cycles that are sllightly different so that they intersect the main rhythm at odd points.
Yeah, yeah. Totally. That’s kind of how most of it is done. But I don’t hear the various cycles. I don’t count or hear the odd numbers. For example, if you have a riff that plays on the eighth notes, but plays nine times and then it starts over, that one just keeps going for like four, eight, sixteen, or thirty two bars and then it starts over. That’s usually how most of the stuff is done. It doesn’t really matter to us how that goes. It’s just a matter of listening to it enough and getting it into your system how you play it. Instead of counting and repeating a cycle, you kind of learn each bar differently than the bar previous, so you hear the riff as a long structure more than as a repetition of what it’s built out of.
Here's the full interview if you want:
http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/crossfade/2008/04/interview_meshuggah.php
Here's another example:
