Swedish titans Meshuggah have made a career out of pushing progressive metal to the outer frequencies, fracturing the musical landscape so much that whole sub-genres of imitators have burst to the surface to compensate. Tuning their guitars to whale-speak levels, and building cartilage-grinding riffs relentless in their polyrhythmic efficiency, Meshuggah turned metal into the mathematics of sonic punishment. New album The Violent Sleep of Reason keeps the approach relentlessly raw: guitars that thrash like grinding machinery, drums that gallop like eight-legged mutant horses, gruff vocals that never, ever, bend to something as whimsical as melody. Low, uncompromising and still in a class of their own. With support from the operatic metalcore of Devil You Know.

Fri 13 Jan 7pm at O2 Institute, 78 High Street, Digbeth, Birmingham B5 6Dy, £22.50 ticketarena.co.uk