No look at Brazilian Metal would of course be complete without checking out perhaps the biggest band to come out of there, and while I have reviewed one of their albums before, in the original Metal Month (anyone who calls it Metal Month I is going to receive a visit from me and my baseball bat!), I was told I had chosen possibly the worst example of their work. So I've researched a little further and I'm told this album, their fifth, broke the somewhat stale thrash rut they had been in for seven years and put them on a more experimental footing. This may of course turn out to be another mistake on my part, but hey, you can't please everyone and the title looks cool, so let's get into it.
Chaos AD --- Sepultura --- 1993 (Roadrunner)
With a heavy tribal-style percussion intro, “Refuse/resist!” opens the album and straight away betrays the band's leaning towards politically-charged lyrics, with a heavy snarling guitar and Max Cavalera hoarsely shouting the vocal almost, before the song kicks into high gear on the twin guitars of Andreas Kisser and Max himself. It then slows down again but picks up for the ending, taking us into “Territory”, a song about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict (particularly relevant at the time of writing) with an angry vocal from Max and a slow, grinding feel to the melody, a sort of appropriately militaristic, marching rhythm. “Slave new world” is kicked off by a big guitar riff then hurtles along, um, well, it sort of starts fast, slows down to a crunching grind, speeds up again --- you know how these things go.
I'm not exactly sure if Max is placing himself in the persona of Jesus when he sings
”Forgive me father/Forgive me God” and
”In the name of God/ I'm the chosen one” but “Amen” seems to concern the Last Day (popular subject with Thrash bands, it would seem).
Note: reading back, I see now that it's actually about the Waco, Texas siege and the “chosen one” is David Koresh. Things get really interesting though when we reach “Kaoiwas”. Apparently inspired by the story of a Brazilian native tribe who committed mass suicide as a protest against the government taking their lands (that'll show 'em, huh?
) it's an acoustic instrumental, which for the first minute is almost silence, then native-style percussion cuts in and guitar comes in too. This is where Sepultura show they're more than just a Thrash Metal band, that they can make other types of music too. Very impressive, and must have confused the hell out of their fans.
Things soon get back to normal though with “Propaganda” as the heavy guitar riffs slam out of Kisser and Igor's drumming batters down the studio like the approach of a German bomber squadron. Max called in the help of ex-Dead Kennedys and Guantanamo School of Medicine man Jello Biafra to write “Biotech is Godzilla”, another hard-hitting song about weaponised bacteria or something. It's a bit mad really, but quite short and piles into “Nomad”, another punching, crunching song which has to do with people being exiled from their homeland. “We who are not as others” has almost half its four-minute length taken up with a big, ponderous, growling guitar before Max snarls in with the vocal, basically just the title of the song. He chants this repeatedly as the song heads towards its conclusion, and it's either a lazy lyric or a masterclass in minimalism, you decide.
Flying along at top speed, “Manifest” returns the guys somewhat to their traditional thrash roots, but there's a personal connection there for Max, as it commemorates the massacre of over a hundred prisoners in a Sao Paulo jail, which his friend photographed. There's a cover version of “The hunt” by New Model Army next. I don't know them much at all, so can't say whether or not it's a good version, but it's a pretty decent song, almost incongruous among the harder, thrashier material Sepultura do, and they handle it well I think. The album then closes on “Clenched fist”, with a sort of industrial metal opening, echoing and hammering before it drops into a dark guitar groove and marches along proudly, defiantly, a fitting closer to the album.
TRACKLISTING
Refuse/resist
Territory
Slave new world
Amen
Kaoiwas
Propaganda
Biotech is Godzilla
Nomad
We who are not as others
Manifest
The hunt
Clenched fist
I don't honestly know enough about this band to say whether or not this album sounds all that different to the previous ones, or even whether or not they continued this evolution away from the pure thrash they had made their name on. It's certainly different to “Dante XII”, but how much is “Chaos AD” a step towards that later sound? You'd have to ask someone who knows more about the history and music of Sepultura.
But this was not a bad album, which is about as much as I can say about it with my limited knowledge of a band who are generally accepted as one of the biggest metal bands in Brazil, if not
the biggest.