Can't judge the surround mix yet but drums are easily heard in the stereo mix. Kick drum is definitely very interesting. It's true that the snare is louder than the rest, and if you only hear it I'm sure it sounds very repetitive.
Regarding the Meshuggah resemblance, you just need to type both bands' names and do a Google search to read a lot of messages claiming they're a Meshuggah clone/rip off (which they're not by any strecht in my opinion, but the influence is obvious anyway). First track of this new albums sounds especially like Meshuggah. I respect your opinion keenly, I read this forum from long ago and can see you know what you're talking about, but being myself both a Meshuggah and Tesseract fan I do see MANY common musical elements between both bands, and I'm not exactly the only one who thinks so.
Yep, pretty annoying actually, ruins the album and mix for me.