Meshuggah albums shun conceptual ‘themes’ or narratives, but Koloss has an undeniable single unified tone. A weighty sense of dreadful inevitability permeates. The listener is sentenced to peine forte et dure, torture and capital punishment by crushing: “His head covered and his feet. One arm will be drawn to one quarter of the house with a cord, and the other arm to another quarter, and in the same manner it will be done with his legs; and there will be laid upon his body iron and stone, as much as he can bear, or more…” The paradoxically intoxicating death wish of the thrill seeker.