Genre story · Metal
Math Metal
Heavy guitar music organized around rhythm patterns that keep shifting under the listener's feet.
Math Metal is an imprecise name for rhythmically complex heavy music. It can be used for the repeated, displaced accents associated with Meshuggah, but also for records nearer technical Metal, Mathcore and instrumental progressive metal. The phrase never had one unambiguous founding scene. By the 1990s, Meshuggah were making heavily syncopated music whose repeated guitar phrases could appear to run against the drum pulse. Later bands developed additional technical and guitar-oriented approaches.
The riff is a pattern
Short low-register figures are repeated with accents in unexpected positions. A drum can keep a steady meter while the guitar seems to move around it, causing the parts to meet at intervals rather than every bar. Some bands alternate these patterns with more conventional melodic sections. The complexity comes from coordination and repetition, not the number of notes alone.
A naming decision
Math Metal overlaps with Djent, Technical Metal and Progressive Metal. It may function better as a searchable descriptor than as an independent strict subgenre.
Listening examples across related music
- 1995MeshuggahDestroy Erase ImproveComplex guitar and percussion patterns in a metal setting.
- 2002MeshuggahNothingA deeper exploration of displaced low guitar figures.
- 2009Animals as LeadersAnimals as LeadersTechnical instrumental guitar music developed from related rhythmic ideas.