Meshuggah, a metal band known for consistently delivering lyrical themes with strong existential implications, is well known for their mind-screw presentation of said lyrics. Undertaking the task of understanding their lyrics is not for the faint of heart, as such lyrics contain great symbolic structure and an abstract theme that can be difficult to relate back to the aspect of reality of which it references. Be that as it may, a goldmine awaits for those who take the time to undergo this transaction, as a profound message inevitably awaits the metal fan who chooses to look profoundly past the surface level contradictions and undergo the journey of exploring Meshuggah's archetypal narratives.
Within the discography of Meshuggah, no piece captures the contradictory nature of their lyrics more than the concept album "Catch Thirtythree", an album which focuses on the nature of contradiction itself. In highlighting our first contradiction, drummer and lyrical writer Tomas Haake confirmed this theme, preventing fans from needing to explore Catch Thirtythree's narrative. That being said, the chaotic absurdism presented by these lyrics hides our second contradiction; a consistent narrative, for not only does the protagonist of this album experience a consistent narrative (which itself is a contradiction in respect to the theme) but that said contradictions can be resolved via the theme. Indeed, contradiction itself is a form of paradox which, though self-contradictory, leads to a unity of opposite, producing an interconnected whole. Hence, the purpose of this essay. First, we shall examine the lyrical theme to reveal the message contained within this apparent absurdism; second, we shall investigate the proponents of dualistic monism as a proponent theory to the nature of metaphysics; finally, we shall demonstrate how the paradoxical nature of the protagonists predicament can be reconciled under a monistic whole.
Part 1: The Unresolved-Resolution
Let us begin with our lyrical analysis. Throughout the album, our narrative is composed in the format of a single song, divided amongst a variety of subsections along the protagonist's journey. I will conduct this analysis through demonstrating the apparent conclusion of each section's message, as well as analyzing contradictions important in the central theme of the narrative. As the majority of lyrics within this piece are contradictions, I will only analyse the contradictions which are of particular salience for understanding the album's message.
With this clarified, let us begin.
Catch Thirtythree
The album name itself demonstrates the nature of its message with a literary allusion title. The titular Catch Thirtythree is a play on the commonly uttered "catch 22" which alludes to a dilemma or difficult circumstance from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting or dependent circumstances. Keep the notion of conflict in mind, as it is of particular relevance to how our narrator attempts to resolve the paradox of his situation. Furthermore, the nature of the cover art provides an important conclusion through its symbolism. In it, we see two serpents, independent, yet intertwined in a two-by-one nature, much reminiscent of the characteristic yin-yang dichotomy presented from the east. However, below these two, we see a third serpent, itself the same species as the other two, yet alone in its interaction. This art demonstrates beautifully how "a picture is worth a thousand words" as this artistic piece shows the entirety of our narrator's journey, from his conflict to his conclusion. Bare this in mind as we continue.
Autonomy Lost
Reaching for the inner bright, the very essence-sun of my dreaming bliss
Guided by a fear blinded outside all shades of the perfect black
The journey of our narrator begins with his desire to reach a positive aspect of himself. Presumably, a life free of discomfort and suffering. This leads to his first paradox, as it is precisely his fear of not obtaining happiness that misguides him and blinds him to the paradoxical effort he is undergoing. In an attempt to obtain bliss as a means of avoiding misery, the existence of his fear will never truly allow him to enter his “inner essence-sun”, for he is so afraid of not obtaining his happiness that this is precisely the mechanism that will never allow him to be happy. Thus, the pursuit of happiness is paradoxical, for pursuing happiness will not permit the sufferer to be content, as they will never know happiness if one must be dependent on it.
Inprint of the Un-Saved
The scattered jigsaw of my redemption laid out before my eyes.
Each piece as amorphous as the other - Each piece in its lack of shape a lie
In his inability to liberate himself from his suffering, the protagonist looks for clues as to how to escape his misery. Problematically, this searching begins to entrap him further into his own paradoxical cycle. All techniques, or “pieces” are simply compulsions that lead to false comfort and reinforce suffering. Hence, the lie by which this “jigsaw” promises to liberate him with its completion. As paradoxical effort leads simply to false comfort, the solution is never permanent, leading to an infinite, amorphous cycle of false liberation.
Disenchantment
Me - The paragon of fear, an immobile skein of tangled nerves exposed
Hastily clawing my way into the darkest of my inner scenes of torture
I stay my breath to escape this slavery
I stay my breath to reawake and face it encore
The struggle to free myself of restraints becomes my very shackles
The protagonist has officially entered the paradoxical realm. In his quest to eradicate himself of discomfort, he has come to see his fear as an enemy to be eradicated. Of course, the negative outlook of one’s fear does not lead to its eradication, but only serves to reinforce the fear within oneself. In the desire to liberate himself of dysphoria, his only success was in learning to become afraid of his own fear, further amplifying its grip and driving him deeper into a negative feedback loop driven by the very desire to escape. The final line of this passage not only summarizes this stanza, but the sum-total of Catch Thirtythree itself. In attempting to be free of negativity, one is merely reinforcing the state of negativity, paradoxically trapping one in the undesired state through the very desire to be liberated.
The Paradoxical Spiral
Non-physical smothering. Asphyxiation by oxygen hands.
Drowning in the endless sky. An ever downward dive, only to surface.
The sewage of indecision, on which all sense of self is afloat.
The vortex-acceleration a constant. Resolute in purpose its choking flow.
The protagonist is now at the mercy of his anxiety. This passage reflects his inability to breathe within his self-contained prison. Viewing his liberation as “oxygen”, he is strangled by the image of euphoria that eludes him further and further. The “sky” with which he can never reach contains bare minimal moments of liberation, in which allowing himself to sink and drown in fear is the very thing that leads to its desensitization. These moments, ignored by the protagonist, lead to the “sewage” of non-acting, as the act of doing nothing is precisely what will liberate him from his absurdist hell. However, these thoughts, images and feelings that he experiences within himself contradict his self-image, and lead him to continue and try to push away his internal states that he refuses to allow expression. As such, he continues to “choke” in the ever-present “stagnant” flow of his anxiety, continuously trapped in his stagnant, ever-flowing spiral of madness.
Re-Inanimate
My ignorance cast in the mold of all things absolute.
I sustain forever my gaze. A stare fixed on the distant oblivion.
Resting in the inverted state of being dead, non-sensory matter
As all the earth, the wind, the fire, the sea behold and learn to pity me
While our narrator had previously stated that he would “face” his anxiety, he is doing so in an attempt to neutralize its grip, not to accept it as an experience to be tolerated. His ignorance of its resolution leads him to continue to avoid its presence through his refusal to acknowledge it. Metaphorically, he uses the paradox of being “dead, non sensory matter.” While he himself is a “stein of tangled nerves exposed”, the material components of his organism themselves are not alive, though in organizing in the [formal cause] of himself, they adhere to the generation of his organic functions. This is the paradox of life. Metaphorically, he is explaining that in avoiding the anxiety, he is commiting a partial suicide through not integrating his internal messenger. As such, the [four elements] that intermerge to form his existence “learn to pity me”, for he continues to confine himself to his hellish feedback loop rather than simply accept the fact of negative experience.
Entrapment
Mutiny of self. Insurrection games convincingly performed.
Incapacitated by physical thoughts acting out the will of tendon and bone.
Have the bridges of insanity been crossed and forever retracted?
Am I standing among a thousand selves? Is the multitude of laughter mine alone?
Our protagonist begins to see his self-denial. He begins to gain awareness that this paradoxical cycle is perpetuated by his lack of self-expression. Though he is beginning to enter the enlightened state of auto-acceptance, he still views his thoughts as being the source of the problem. As the cycle has continued, he has become so entrenched within his individual war that he sees no exit from his apparent madness. In this anxiety, he becomes aware of all the possibilities that may befall him within his thought-loop, yet admits that he may be the very source of his suffering through questioning if the “laughter” resulting from this paradoxical absurdity is merely his.
Mind's Mirrors
The feeding frenzy of my starving soul, gnawing voraciously at the bones,
the exo-skeletal patchwork protecting my own reflection within;
The twin-and-same engaged in the mirrored act of chewing away
at the shell of my attacking self. The paradox unseen.
Treacherous this deceit to make no choice matter
To have and yet lose yourself, until finally all reasons why are forgotten
To live through one’s own shadow. Mute and blinded, is to really see
Eclipse the golden mirror and the reflection is set free.
The narrator has finally discovered the central aspect of his dichotomy. Eating away at himself in an attempt to live an ideal existence, he becomes aware of who he truly is and what is occurring within his mind. Seeing his idealized image in contrast to his ever-present self, he himself attacks himself through being unable to achieve his desired image as well as not permitting his true nature to be expressed. This paradox of both trying to “be” himself and yet destroy himself leaves him to attack himself within a state of psychological autoimmunity.
In realizing his treachery towards his authenticity, he concludes that in failing to introspect, one can naturally express themselves through their ignorance. To be unaware of oneself, “mute and blinded”, one can “see” themselves through the consequences of their actions, and thus live authentically. Hence, the narrator's solution is to eradicate his idealized state of liberation, and in accepting reality, “the reflection is set free.”
In Death -Is Life
So imminently visible - this cloaked innocent guilt
Sentenced to a lifetime, a second of structured chaos
Trampled by the ferocious, raging crowds of solitude
I’m the soil beneath me soaking up the sustenance of my own death
Extradited to the gods of chance, the deities of all things random
Alive, multicolored, twitching in their monochrome world
Through no fault of his own, the narrator acknowledges that he was randomly “selected” to suffer a chaotic state of mind, constantly structured within its apparently randomized pathology. Isolated within his burdened state, he contemplates about how he has been attempting to kill off aspects of his mind. However, he begins to succumb to his internal voices, these “gods of chance.” These gods represent not only the apparent randomness of his cycle, but aspects of the narrator's psyche that long for self-expression. Though these aspects of the narrator bring him anguish and suffering, he acknowledges the randomness of his mind still offers the chance of fulfillment for which he has so longed for. Thus, the narrator's thoughts may be bleak, but still contain “color” within his state of bleakness.
In Death - Is Death
Indescent to the searhing eyes, i’m all things vivid in a world of grey
So easily spotted, so easily claimed in this domain where all is prey
My thoughts a radiant beacon to the omnidimensional hunter-god radar
I’m a marklight of light to these subconscious carnivores
I am them. I am teeth. I’m their arousal at the kill
Feeding on self. A schizoreality warp. The contradiction fulfilled.
Focus the only means to see me back to life's unending swirl
A reversal of passing away, as the world of dead, as away is now my origin
The protagonist begins by explaining how after this realization, he is the only answer that is obvious within a nebulous world of uncertainty. As a result of the predicament of not having answers, he is easily victimized by the anxiety via a need for certainty. His intrusive thoughts serve as the beacon which attracts this anxiety, continuously being devoured by the “carnivores.” Though he is the victim of their hunt, he is also them, as it is him who devours himself within this cyclical self-consumption. Trying to utilize the epiphany which had previously brought him comfort, he tries to escape his thoughts by focusing on external reality, back to the “away” reality which serves as the source of his origin.
Shed
I float through physical thoughts. I stare down the abyss of organic dreams
All bets off I plunge - Only to find that self is shed
With time, the narrator has begun looking beyond himself and living in accordance with his previous doctrine “to live through one’s own shadow.” He no longer attempts to suppress aspects of his mind's expression, but rather learns to tolerate his discomfort of paradoxical self-expression. In so doing, he lets go of the desire to be in a different state of mind and simply accepts his self-drowning and permits the discomfort. In so doing, he sheds the objective of liberating himself to reach his “inner bright”, but embraces his state as it naturally is.
Personae Non Gratae
A lie to maintain equilibrium, to hold me in this dead realm - this last ever dream
I’m the thought that never crossed my mind - disguised in the evident. Forever unredeemed
The narrator has learned to separate the false comfort that fuels his paradox from himself. He realizes that it is the search for abolishment from pain that caused his cycle to stick and fueled its return. In so doing, he now realizes he never thought of simply letting his internal state be, and that the nature of his paradox is that the desire to be liberated of pain only reinforces the pain that one suffers.
Dehuminization
A new level reached, where the absence of air lets me breathe
I’m inverted electrical signals. A malfunctioning death-code incomplete
All things before me, at first unliving glimpse undeciphered
Its semantics rid of logic. Nothing is all. All is contradiction
Grinding, churning - the sweetest ever noises
Decode me into their non-communication
A soundtrack to my failure, one syllable, one vowel
A stagnant flow of endings. Un-time unbound. Merging to form the multi-none
A sickly dance of matter, malignantly benign. Greeting the chasm - unbearable, sublime
In surviving through his dysfunctional state, the narrator finds order within his chaos. He accepts that he is simply death waiting to happen, and along the trajectory of life, many events will occur that do not make sense. He accepts the absurdity of existence, and learns that the acceptance of the discomfort with self-contradiction is what will allow him to be liberated from it. Thus, he accepts it within himself, and the permitting of anxiety allows him to live without being a victim of chronic fear. His further failure to achieve his “inner bright” was precisely his greatest victory, and he finds beauty in the “grinding, churning” of his thoughts. Forever being locked inside the lifelong journey of finding the end to suffering, he sees that all his epiphanies led him exactly to where he was; running a hundred kilometers an hour, yet never arriving anywhere. As such, he embraces the final conclusion of ceasing all effort, recognizing the beauty within himself and his life, including when he is inevitably subjected to unbearable pain.
Sum
Vision will blind. Severance ties. Medium am I. True are all lies.
The final conclusion of our protagonist. He embraces the paradox of existence and has found solace within it. Thus, his journey has come to an end.
Part 2:The Liminal-Destination
Let us take a brief moment from our analysis and explore the realm of metaphysics. In attempting to understand reality, philosophers have devised many potential theories as to the ultimate nature of reality. Though many potential schools of thought exist, two-central camps seem ever-present in metaphorical exploration; dualism: the proposal that reality is composed of two primary substances (usually matter and mind) and monism: the proposition of reality being of one fundamental nature. Various forms of monistic thought exist, including idealism (reality is mental and/or dependent on mind) and the currently popular materialism (reality is purely material). Ironically, the majority of humans think in a dualistic fashion (“i’m feeling fine, but my mind is slow today) and indeed, with the ubiquity of religious belief, it is a safe assumption to presume the majority of humans are dualist. There’s merely one problem: for centuries, dualists could never answer the question of how an abstract, incorporeal substance could interact with a concrete, material substance. This leads to my central proposal: opposites are joined at the hip. What we perceive to be two things possessing a different nature is merely two-different aspects of the same underlying phenomena. The only difference lies in the degree with which an aspect of that phenomenon is expressed. This notion, unfortunately unpopular, is known as dual-aspect monism, also known as dialectical monism.
Let’s illustrate this theory with an example. If you are near one, examine the nearest exit near you. It may be the exit to your apartment, home, or whatever room you are in. Traditionally, an exit is seen as the opposite to an entrance, as exits permit one to leave their current vicinity. However, everything with an exit has an entrance. The two terms are not mutually exclusive. Rather, they depend on each other for the existence of the other. Furthermore, what is an exit or an entrance depends on the perspective of the viewer, for in exiting one room, you are entering another; and by entering another, you are exiting from your current position. Entrance and exit are not only dependent upon the other, they are two aspects of the exact same thing.
Part 3: The Articulate-Incongurence
Perhaps you are beginning to see how this ties in to Catch Thirtythree. But before delivering my concluding thought, let us examine the law of non-contradiction within philosophy.
The law of noncontradiction states that it is impossible for a proposition to be A and not-A simultaneously. Something may only ever be itself, not true and false at the same time. As such, A cannot be B, and B cannot be A. But let’s look a little deeper. What are A and B exactly? Obviously, they are letters used to represent a proposition. But what is a letter? Aside from a unit of language used to formulate an utterance, it is merely a series of lines formed to a set, defined sequence when written. As A and B are both letters, they are both defined by the set sequence of lines with which they are composed. Furthermore, if you took A and rearranged the set sequence to a new set sequence, you would end up precisely with B.
Such is the case for all reality, and hence, for our protagonist of Catch Thirtythree. Virtually every paradox included, interpreted literally and metaphorically, can be resolved under this paradigm. This is what our narrator has finally concluded. All of his contradictions were part of one encompassing thing; himself. The only perceived paradox was in the failure to integrate his various self-aspects to encompass one individuality. Had the narrator accepted his fear, he would have seen that he was already within his inner bright. For as Buddha said over two-thousand years ago, “There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.”
As a sufferer of OCD, I can affirm that millions of people are suffering through the same cycle. The attempt to run from yourself only leads to the reinforcement that one has something to run from. But as our thoughts are not controlled by us, attempting to rigidly dictate our mental content only serves to reinforce our anxieties. However, submission to our state of being permits its expression, and in so doing, processes what needs to be felt. Our narrator has learned this fundamental lesson, and this is the central method of Catch Thirtythree. Let’s not treat the absurdity of life’s contradictions as an enemy to be defeated, but as a friend to be embraced. Recognize that your inner-bright is your reality all along, and you will avoid the cycle of suffering.
“The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” -Albert Camus
