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Sometimes it’s easy to wonder just how far the quest for pushing metal into the future will have to go.

And although there are loads of bands twisting, refiguring and melding our genre in new and exciting ways, there are also those who think that wacky gimmicks and late-night ideas dreamed up by drunken, stoned, giggling musicians can be passed off as visionary artistic statements. Danimal Cannon is a one-man electro-tech-metal mash-up fed and processed through an eight-bit Gameboy, and has, quite astonishingly, managed to shift over 10,000 copies despite being wilfully untraditional and jarringly retro at the same time.

So while the idea of Meshuggah providing the soundtrack to The Legend Of Zelda might have raised a few eyebrows in 1993, in 2016 it’s hard to ignore the overriding wackiness.

There’s definitely some skill and talent here – the title track could pass as a song – but if you’re immune to whimsy, an initial sense of bewilderment is likely to give way to exasperation pretty quickly.

Since blagging his way onto the Hammer team a decade ago, Stephen has written countless features and reviews for the magazine, usually specialising in punk, hardcore and 90s metal, and still holds out the faint hope of one day getting his beloved U2 into the pages of the mag. He also regularly spouts his opinions on the Metal Hammer Podcast.