Maybe ear fatigue is part of what makes Chaosphere Chaosphere.
It's certainly not conventional, and it's not cute fuzzy bunnies hugging each other and singing Raffi songs, but it's part of the impact. I think that there's a very good reason why classical music is played in auditoriums with comfortable chairs lined up in rows, and why metal concerts have pits and people ramming into each other like pissed off rhinos. When I go to a metal show, I know that there's going to be a crowd that wants blood and by the time I'm out I'll be bruised, exhausted, often bleeding, and otherwise completely wrecked, and that's part of what makes that show for me. I'll be too tired to move the next day, and I'll be black and blue for a week, and I won't be talking right for several weeks after that, which is definitely not something that's always desirable but does usually add to the value for me just because of the way metal hits me and the place it's held since the moment I got into it. I don't think Chaosphere is supposed to be easy to listen to, and I don't think Meshuggah's music in general is supposed to sound at all like anything else. You shouldn't expect poppy catchy nonsense from a song called New Millenium Cyanide Christ - a lot of music's meaning, for me, at least, is often called imagery or deeper meaning or all sorts of other nonsense, and Meshuggah's mechanical brutality says more about humanity than a lot of the more 'human' and 'musical' stuff. This is why I enjoy the songs instead of just looking for what I find everywhere else - they have a different place entirely. I don't see why they should be held to the same standards as other music in one area - here, production and tone - and expected to break the mold in everything else. If anyone does, I'd like to know.
Jeff
