Sol Niger Within, Version 3.33

Fredrik Thordendal

Product Details

• Audio CD (February 23, 1999)
• Original Release Date: February 22, 1999
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Relapse
• ASIN: B00000I40S
• Also Available in: Audio CD
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #46,009 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Fredrick Thorendal's (Meshuggah) well-regarded solo album.The whole album is one 50 minute song that is extremely heavy, hypnotic, psychedelic, and rhythmically complex. It's an extratrerrestrial story told by crushing Metal+Prog+Free Jazz+some of the wierdest guitar solos you're ever gonna hear. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Steve Vai? Who is that?, April 12, 2000

By	spunk (USA) - See all my reviews

Imagine Fear Factory (if they took lessons from Dream Theater) with Steve Vai (a Vai with 4 hands) on guitar, Cookie Monster gurgling broken glass (coached by a pit viper) on vocals, add a bassist and drummer who played with Zappa, and get Mike Patton to write the songs (if Patton was watching a Clockwork Orange backwards and smoking Chiquita banana peels), and you might come up with this GODLIKE album. Buy this now and forever be scarred. Aural mindgames.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Whoa, freaky., February 14, 2003

By	Lord Chimp (Monkey World) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Meshuggah's Fredrik Thordendal is a remarkable guitar player, among the most innovative in metal I believe. With his solo project, Special Defects, he adopts a more jazz-influenced stimulus which is stacked with the twisted metal passages that forged his reputation with Meshuggah. _Sol Niger Within Version 3.33_ is a frightening 26-song plunge into a twisted world. Fusion idioms make themselves heard but they are buried under complex layers of cybernetic trash that could be mistaken for a Terminator army's death march theme. This is one continuous outpouring of musical dementia - the album is pretty much a single piece arbitrarily divided up into tracks, and unlike most songs divided in this manner, there is virtually no guessing where one track should end and another should begin. Weird song titles like "Vitamin K Experience" and "The Executive Furies of the Robot Lord of Death" seem to make it more irrelevant.

If you have heard Meshuggah, you should know this is far less harsh and abrasive, though still very heavy and punishing. Thordendal's gated riffing style makes his rhythms very distinct and choppy, but compared to Meshuggah there is a bit more fluidity to the rhythm. Thordendal takes many opportunities to expand the vocabulary of his Holdsworth-inspired legato lead style, revealing his knack for modal improvisation too. Demonic-robot rasping of both Thordendal himself and Thomas Haake will possibly leave first-degree burns. And the drumming...it's good. Very good. If Virgil Donati is the Thunder from Down Under, then Morgan Agren is...um, the Demon from Sweden (hey, I tried), superimposing odd-metered riffing with his own polyrhythmic layering. As opposed to Thomas Haake's drumming with Meshuggah -- which is quite deliberately super-tight, machinelike and rigid -- Agren's is more organic and limber.

This is an utterly compelling avant-metal fusion album that is not just for Meshuggah fans. Anyone willing to experiment with different musical experiences should direct their attention to _Sol Niger Within_.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worth. Every. Penny., May 11, 2005

By	Silith Crowe "Confirmed Loser" (Warrenton, VA) - See all my reviews

If you're looking at this item, then you must be a Meshuggah fan. Fredrik Thordendal, the genius behind this obscure little side project, is the guitarist behind the aforementioned band, and if you aren't aware of Meshuggah yet, I highly recommend you explore them first. Read on if you're still curious...

To the Meshuggeners, this review is a strong encouragement for you to take the extra step towards buying this CD. I bought mine from Morgan Agren's website, the only time I've ever dared venture away from Amazon.com (the only time I ever needed to!). It was expensive, but it was also brand new (shrink-wrapped), which is important to me.

This is my favorite CD ever.

Whew, now that I got that out, let me tell you why: this is a musical experience beyond your average metal. I listen to metal, and I listen to this, and the sensations I recieve from each are actually different. With metal, it's about aggression and excitement. With Meshuggah and Fredrik Thordendal it is... confusion? With a mix of awe? And definitely some fear. But there's something else in there. Something alien. Something I will never put my finger on, but my brain sure knows its there. Sol Niger Within is the perfect way to explore this sensation.

This album is one long song at about 42 minutes, but it is divided into thirty tracks or so, making it easy to find your favorite riff or solo. This makes things a bit hard on iPod users like myself who regularly shuffle songs, but trust me when I say you won't mind sitting down and giving this album the whole of your attention.

The drum performance is out of this world. Thomas Haake of Meshuggah is highly revered, but his robotic sense of timing is matched with ease by Morgan Agren. What's truly amazing to hear, however, are the moments - and they are plenty - when the drummer frees himself of the mathematics and plays fast and freely instead, abusing the entire drum set. Sometimes it adds amazing color to the music, sometimes it's wild and goes off on its own like freeform jazz, and sometimes it is just a formidible wall of sound. All the time, it is pure heaven for drum fanatics.

I've never really given much credit to vocals in metal, but let me tell you, Fredrik Thordendal's staccato demon-like spitting sounds damn cool without taking itself too seriously or offending the eardrums. The delivery mimics the stop-and-go style of the rhythm guitars, too, so you could say that the vocals add an entire new layer to the complexity. There are some lame spoken word sections, but in general the vox add to the otherworldly atmosphere. Anyway, I've never really given much credit to lyrics in metal, either...

Fredrik's distinct solos are so plentiful here. The "freak out" moments for most Meshuggah fans when listening to their albums are often during the bridge section of their songs where Fredrik crazy-solos over a twisted riff, and you get that times ten on this album.

I'm trying to think of a downside here, and I think I may have one. The only thing a Meshuggener might not be expecting is the experimental stuff towards the end. I don't want to spoil anything, but just remember that this IS a side project and experimentation is normal. From Thordendal, I wasn't too surprised. There are some seemingly off-key notes that are very interesting, and the whole change in tone is certainly delivered with the tongue firmly placed in the cheek. It's fun and grows on you with every listen, even if it can drag a little bit.

Speaking of dragging, I think I better wrap things up. I consider this the lost Meshuggah album, and there's nothing a Meshuggah fan could want more than more Meshuggah, is there? Fredrik did enough to make this project his own, and everything he did was good, but this was obviously directed at his Meshuggah fans. As for everyone else, well... I'm still trying to get my friends to except this as something other than "broken-record static."