Swedish extreme metal band Meshuggah have just unveiled a morose and grotesquely frightening new video for their single “They Move Below” from the band’s seventh studio album- their latest to date- entitled Immutable. According to Blabbermouth, “the clip was produced with the assistance of an AI program to manipulate images based on the artist’s interpretation of themes in the music and title.” These technological pioneers are experimenting with AI technology within their newest video as they aim to depict the eerie culpability of ignorance through the melting of wax landscapes adorned with millions of eyes that seem to follow an individual’s every waking move; the ten-minute video accompanying the track seems to envelop itself the sinking feeling of not knowing how or when to take action or what to do to remedy feelings of inadequacy – instead letting oneself fall victim and face the consequences of their foretold ignorance and lasting innocence.
This reflects Meshuggah guitarist Mårten Hagström’s own analysis of the album Immutable’s title: “The title fits perfectly for where we are as a band. We’re older now. Most of us are in our fifties now, and we’ve settled into who we are. Even though we’ve been experimenting all along, I also think we’ve been the same since day one. The way we approach things and why we still make new albums, and why we still sound the way we do, it’s immutable. Humanity is immutable, too. We commit the same mistakes over and over. And we are immutable. We do what we do, and we don’t change.” In alignment with the prior analysis of the video, the inability of human beings to change and to learn from their past mistakes may contribute to either a feeling of paralysis or, more popularly, the idea that a person must come to terms with their inadequacy and cherish their best effort as it is.
When working on the Immutable album, Hagström talked about these emotions of perseverance and settlement amidst feelings of quelled inadequacy as well: “You know what it’s like. When you work on an album, you really don’t know. When you’re done with it, everything’s so jumbled up in your head, you don’t know how to feel about it. It’s just, like, ‘Okay. Good enough. Let it go.’
Check out the music video for “They Move Below” here.
Meshuggah has also unveiled a cinematic new music video for their single “I Am That Thirst,” another track from Meshuggah’s latest album.
Dylan Hicks of Mxdwn has also released an album review of Meshuggah’s Immutable. Check it out here.
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