obZen is the sixth full-length studio album by Swedish metal band Meshuggah. It was released in Europe on March 7, 2008, and in the U.S. on March 11, 2008..It contains nine tracks, and clocks in at a length of 52 minutes and 25 seconds.Tomas Haake makes his return as the studio drummer for the record after "sitting out" on Catch Thirtythree for the use of the Drumkit from Hell. The album debuted at number 59 in the USA with first week sales of 11,384 copies. In Sweden, the album debuted at number 16 on the official album chart. In the UK, the album debuted at number 151.
Background
In an interview with Revolver, Haake stated that obZen will be a collective return to the band's past works, signaling a shift in direction away from their previous math metal-laden effort, Catch Thirtythree. "We've got some fast, intense songs and hectic, heavy stuff that draws from all the things we've done in the past."
The album was originally planned for release in November 2007, prior to a European tour featuring Meshuggah themselves and The Dillinger Escape Plan. The recording process for obZen took longer than expected and led the band to drop out of the tour, later explaining on their official website that the "album-promotional" aspect of the touring was no longer existent and that they would rather focus their priorities on getting the record finished.
In a recent interview, drummer Tomas Haake commented further on the length taken to record the album: "This time around we took almost six months to do all the recording and the sampling [...] we definitely took our time" . He elaborated on the concept of the album in another interview, saying: "If you haven't figured it out yet, obZen means that mankind has found its 'zen' in the obscure and obscene"
Album art
Although Meshuggah have not done so in the past, the album art of obZen was outsourced. With a vision of what they wanted the artwork to be, Meshuggah made use of cross-media artist Joachim Luetke. In an interview with Nuclear Blast USA, Haake and Hagstrφm explain that the artwork features a photograph of a real male model (although the model looks computerized) in the Lotus position with the bottom half of the photograph being taken from a female model (because the male model couldn't perform the position), making the figure androgynous
Track listing
1. "Combustion" 4:11
2. "Electric Red" 5:53
3. "Bleed" 7:22
4. "Lethargica" 5:49
5. "obZen" 4:27
6. "This Spiteful Snake" 4:55
7. "Pineal Gland Optics" 5:14
8. "Pravus" 5:13
9. "Dancers to a Discordant System" 9:36
