New Millennium Cyanide Christ

"New Millennium Cyanide Christ"
Song by Meshuggah from the album Chaosphere
Released	1998
Genre	Extreme metal
Length	5:35
Writer	Tomas Haake
Chaosphere track listing
"Concatenation" (1) "New Millennium Cyanide Christ" (2) "Corridor Of Chameleons" (3)

New Millennium Cyanide Christ is a song by the extreme metal group Meshuggah from the 1998 album Chaosphere. It stands as one of the most popular songs by the band to date.

Interpretation

The song is about a man who tries to become the equivalent of Jesus and lead the population of the new millennium into salvation. He attempts to do this through various mechanical and chemical enhancements "I replace my bones with bars... Drug of gods into my pounding veins." He also attempts to create a perfect world through self-destruction (and appears to be honest in his intentions, despite the fact that he accomplishes so by inflicting bodily harm upon himself): "Hexagonal bolts to fill my mouth/ Sharpened to deplete/ the creator of all violence/ Without speech there will be no deceit." It represents the concept that for man to be perfect, all senses would have to be removed from the people on Earth.

Rhythmic structure

The song, in typical Meshuggah fashion, applies various poly-metrical changes throughout the song, though the song as a whole is firmly rooted in an altogether standard time signature of 4/4, which is shown mainly through the consistent cymbal and snare pattern in the drum track throughout the song. Any unconventional rhythms within the guitars therefore end up conforming to this traditional time signature. Ignoring the standard metre of the drums, though, and solely concentrating on the guitars would give these results:

• The intro riff is five measures of 23/16 and one of 13/16.
• The verse is 9 measures of 3/8 and one measure of 5/8.
• The passage from the lyrics "Self-inflicted fractures" changes to 3/4, 9/16, 3/4, 9/16, 3/4, 5/8
• The passage from the lyrics "Baptized in vitriolic acid" and the guitar solo is in 9/16
• The passage from the lyrics "Disciples" changes to a 4/4 rhythm while the guitar superimposes a dotted eighth note pulse.
• The ending riff is 6/8, 8/8, 6/8, 8/8, 4/8 (which all adds up to 32/8, and could be divided into four 4/4 measures)

Video

The song features a rather unorthodox music video, displaying the five members of the band sitting in a moving RV, wearing sunglasses while headbanging and air guitaring to the song (which includes Fredrik Thordendal's precise solowork as well), while Tomas Haake sits on a bunk bed with two drumsticks and Jens Kidman screams the lyrics into a red ballpoint pen - all while keeping a straight face. According to the liner notes of Rare Trax (which contained the MPEG version of the video), the video was recorded in 1999, "somewhere in Ohio". Hagström has claimed that the band was drunk at the time.

The bed has "It was Satan's wrong!" scrawled upon it, which is a literal word-by-word translation from Swedish band The Kristet Utseende's song "Det var Satans fel" ("It was Satan's fault" or "Satan made me do it"). Haake later admitted that the writing was done via duct tape, "out of pure boredom".^[1] He also admitted that the video itself was intended as a joke, and was never really meant to be released, although it ended up being the most popular Meshuggah video on YouTube.

The video can also be found on the DVD available with the 2006 re-release of Nothing.

Due to a production mistake, some CDs were lacking the videos from Rare Trax - they were later made available online by Nuclear Blast.

Personnel

• Jens Kidman - vocals
• Fredrik Thordendal - lead guitar
• Mårten Hagström - rhythm guitar
• Gustaf Hielm - bass
• Tomas Haake - drums

References

1. ^ Meshuggah - Nuclear Blast Video Cast - Episode Two - PART 4