Math rock and the difficulty of discussing it with people who haven't heard it is something every math rock fan deals with.

The usual description — "it's rock music in odd time signatures" — is accurate but produces the wrong impression. People who haven't heard math rock imagine something cold and mechanical from this description. The description fails to convey the physicality of the music or the emotional effect of rhythmic complexity working at its best.

The better description I've developed over years of trying: math rock is music that creates a specific physical sensation of controlled imbalance. It makes you feel like you're moving forward in a direction that's slightly off from what you expected, and then periodically locks into a resolution that you feel in your body before your brain registers it.

This description still doesn't fully capture it. The only real solution is to put someone in a car on a long drive and play the right record at the right volume.