MetalSucks

In my review for AC/DC’s Black Ice, I wrote about how certain trademarks of an artist or band – Michael Jackson’s falsetto, Axl Rose’s gravelly throat, Angus Young’s dirty blues rock pecking – suck me in immediately, even despite their use for blatantly nostalgic purposes. The punch in the gut of Andreas Kisser’s muddy-but-monolithic power chords at the beginning of “A-Lex I,” the opening track on Sepultura’s eleventh album, A-Lex, pull me right back to being seventeen and getting lost in the ridiculous grooves of the band’s punk/thrash classic, Chaos A.D. Of course, when making this comparison, I meant it positively toward Black Ice. And though A-Lex doesn’t necessarily suckle at the leathery teat of nostalgia, it doesn’t lift off in the way the intro track implies. Though the album is packed with primo Sepulturaness, it’s also packed with directionless filler, bloating it from a tight groove metal record to an overly/questionably ambitious record that’s practically impossible to get through in one sitting. Their lack of self-editing ultimately mars the record, but the bits of it that are good – and don’t let my misgivings fool you, because there’s quite a bit that’s pretty fucking good – make you glad they’re still here, even if they are completely without the Cavalera brothers for the first time since the band’s inception.

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Blabbermouth tipped us off to the below footage of Sepultura rehearsing a new song for their upcoming album, which is apparently a concept album based on Anthony Burgess’ novel A Clockwork Orange (which was – duh – also the basis for Stanley Kubrick’s controversial classic film). This new album should provoke a lot of interest (if not record sales), ’cause it’s the first Sep album ever to feature neither of the Cavalera brothers.

So will it be any good? The riff in the video is okay, even if it doesn’t exactly knock my socks off. But the band’s last album, Dante XXI, was good enough that I’m curious to hear what Andreas Kisser and the fellas come up with.

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So… what do y’all think? Let’s get some premature judgements up in here!

-AR

Metal has always been the unwanted red-headed stepchild at the annual SXSW Music Conference in Austin, Texas. Back when I was the metal/hardcore DJ at the University of Texas’s student radio station KVRX (’88-’90), metal at SXSW was usually relegated to one showcase at the Backroom, way far away from the hub of activity in downtown Austin.To counter that mentality, my best friend and co-DJ, Ray “Raydog” Seggern used to create our own showcases to spotlight heavier bands not cut from the dying days of glam.

Our biggest success was in 1990 when we threw our own anti-SXSW showcase in a run-down, but still active, Riverside Drive dollar movie theater, seats and all. The show featured Austin bands Zero Tolerance and Dread (featuring future Skrew/16Volt/Daniel Ash bassist Mike Peoples), Arlington thrashers Arcane, and Houstonians Dead Horse. The major coupe from the gig was getting a rep from Metal Blade to come to the show and eventually sign Dead Horse.

Fast forward 18 years to SXSW 2008 – Metal is everywhere!

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Infliked, the new album by Cavalera Conspiracy, may have turned out to be a pleasantly awesome surprise (read our review here), but the band’s video for first single “Sanctuary” is, alas, not nearly as cool.

The concept isn’t bad: at a photo shoot for the band, a 28 Days Later-style monster goes on the rampage and kills pretty much everyone in the room (save for the band, who, I suppose, are saved by the sheer power of their rocking). The clip is even filmed in lo-fi video to give it some sense of “realism.”

Unfortunately, it’s also shot in first-person shakey cam, a la The Blair Witch Project and the more recent Cloverfield, a.k.a. The Blair Monster Project. The result is that you can’t really see anything, and I don’t mean in a Jaws being-suggestive-is-more-scary-than-being-gory kind way; I mean, really, you can’t see very much.

So, y’know, that blows.

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-AR

Is this some kind of hoax to promote the new Cavalera Conspiracy album? We seriously can’t decide whether this shatters Igor Cavalera’s metal cred or ups it to the Nth power.

-VN

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I’m really, really impressed with Inflikted, the debut (if you don’t count Sepultura) album from Cavalera Conspiracy.

Unfortunately, the new cover art for the album sucks even worse than the old cover art:

Okay, remember when Sepultura used to have freaky, scary, horrific, bad ass metal cover art? So why the fuck does this album have some modern-art Devo shit? It’s a good thing the album is actually good…

Thanks to MetalSucks reader Morizz for the tip!

-AR

Since so many of you see to be as pleasantly surprised as we are that those two Cavalera Conspiracy songs that surfaced earlier this week are actually good, we’re pleased to announce that the entire album has now leaked online. And, believe it or not, those songs were just foreshadowing; in other words, the entire album is really, really good. Head over to Kill the Musica to get the album. Enjoy it, and have a good weekend…

-AR

I’m feeling ready to be not so cynical about the Cavalera Conspiracy, the new Sepultura semi-reunion between brothers Max and Igor Cavalera (Soulfly’s Marc Rizzo and Gojira’s Joe Duplantier round out the line-up on guitar and bass, respectively). And why, pray tell, am I feeling so generous towards the band these days? Well, it’s cause these just released tracks, “Sanctuary” and “Inflikted” actually sound more or less exactly the way I wanted them to, which is to say: they sound an awful lot like good ol’ school Sepultura. Yes, it seems that the shitty band name, cheap album art, deliberate “hip” misspellings and other general shenanigans were bad omens not to be taken seriously… although I suppose the complete album could still totally suck.

Download the tracks below and let us know what you think.

The Cavalera Conspiracy – “Sanctuary”

The Cavalera Conspiracy – “Inflikted”

-AR

I suppose I have no real reason to feel so cynical about the music that the reunited Cavalera brothers will make together; in 2005, Max Cavalera released Dark Ages, arguably the best Soulfly album to date, while Igor Cavalera and his band mates put out what is arguably the best Max-less Sepultura album, Dante XXI, just a year later. And they both made albums of such quality by introducing elements of older Sep back into music that become far too diluted with the “legacy” of the over-rated Roots, even if they’ve never abandoned that album’s musical “advances” altogether. In other words, it would seem that both Max and Igor have their heads in the right place, creatively speaking, and if ever a Sepultura semi-reunion was going to (needlessly?) produce new music, now would be the time.

Still, I was hoping that the band would come up with a better name than Cavalera Conspiracy, and a better album title than Inflikted. Not so, says Blabbermouth, who exclusively announced the album’s track list yesterday.

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