Meshuggah is perhaps one of the most innotave bands in the realm of metal today. Since 1985, they have been bending minds with their unique style of chaotic metal. Many bands such as Chimaira, Metallica, Lamb of God, Deftones and Mnemic have sited them as huge influences on their music styles. Listening to any Meshuggah disc will probably take at least 3 times through and through to gather the meanings of the lyrics and the musical structure of each separate track on the specific disc. On Nothing first released in 2000 (and re-issued again in October 2006), the band had custom 8 - string guitars constructed for their use on the album's writing process. This was definately a new step for the band, and to make it even more unique, the guitars were downtuned to plow through bass-like notes and grinding guitar melodies. Along with the guitars is drummer Tomas Haake's unique and irregular drumming in which he play a different time signature for each limb. Each song is very chaotic but more mellow compared to albums such as Chaosphere and Destroy Erase Improve. The songs on Nothing almost have a jazz like feeling in their melodies and as always with very discordant and futuristic - sounding solos. Each track has a different theme regarding the human race for the most part. 1.) Stengah - from what i can gather, this song is about the overuse of drugs and the strength that addiction builds over the course of the individual's drug use, until they are a slave to it. "Beaten to the unforgiving ground. lashed into submission-- by the inner starving demon. By it's unrelenting handStill you claim the worshippers pose and you bow. You kneel to the syringe" Hence the worship of drugs.2.) Rational Gaze - this song is about cutting away from the images and words of "truth" known as the news. Everything we see, whether on TV, newsprint, the Internet, or heard on radio... it has to be taken with a grain of salt. The ones who realize this "complete the disintegration" and dissemination of the truth from lies. In the end though, "the ladder beyond our grasp" and there is nothing we can do to change the huge political machine in place. So, "we walk among the ignorant", knowing that there is not much we can do. In being dissidents, we only run into trouble with no solution, and so we "never stray from the common lies." In effect, we are so blindly led by what the media and the press informs us about.3.) Perpetual Black Second - Perpetual Black Second is a song about a descent into a katatonic state caused by your actions of the past. Your body is consumed entirely by anger and remorse and you are helpless to stop your mind as it travels further from it's orignal state into dementia. It likely that actions it refer to (ie "Please forgive the evil in me--the darkness within") include rape and murder. 4.) Closed Eye Visuals - This song is about experiencing the character of the world through the use of hallucinogens such as LSD. This song compares with the concept of drug abuse as presented in Stengah, but it has a more direct description of the visual effects that it has on the abuser. Like Stengah, the individual eventually becomes a slave to the drug. Never to be freed. "Reverberating this unyielding dream. Lost in this greedy illusion I'm forever devoured by the closed eye visual delusion"This album is a work of art and a masterpiece. You will not be disapointed