Readers, I have failed you.

I feel obligated to tell you that there’s another new Cavalera Conspiracy song out (“Thrasher,” below) because it’s the Cavaleras, but I’ve listened to it three times trying to find something to say about it, and then I was like, “Oh I wanna listen to Chaos A.D.,” and then I just put Chaos A.D. on.

It’s not that I hate the Cavalera Conspiracy song or anything, it’s just that none of what we’ve heard so far socks me in the bread basket the way Inflikted did (when it was like “HOLY SHIT THESE BOYS CAN STILL WRITE SEPULTURA SONGS AFTER ALL!!!”), and, besides, like I said, I have access to Chaos A.D. And Beneath the Remains. And Arise! I should find some quality time with Arise real soon, it’s been awhile.

C&C Music Factory’s latest, Blunt Force Trauma, comes out March 28 on Roadrunner. Despite the fact that none of the songs we’ve heard so far have fucked my face off, I am going to listen to it all the way through at least once.

-AR

Cavalera Conspiracy are giving away a new song, “Killing Inside,” for free download here (you gotta give up your e-mail address to get it, natch). It’s the first song we’ve heard from the Cavalera brothers’ eagerly anticipated new album, Blunt Force Trauma, and… I think it’s kind of a bummer.

Correction: half a bummer. Everything from Marc “Why the fuck is he wearing that backpack?” Rizzo’s guitar solo onwards is exactly what I want from CC — which is to say, it sounds appropriately like old school Sepultura, with plenty of thrash elements and lots of awesome shredding. (I may not like that Rizzo was once in Ill Nino, but I can’t fault his skills as a musician.) But the first half of the song is incredibly meh. I hate to sound like the typical lugheaded metal fan, but the shit needs to be faster and more vicious — even the superior second half doesn’t hold a candle to anything on the band’s debut, Inflikted. The riff that powers “Killing Inside” is slow and redundant and kinda reminds me of the riff from the Murderolls’ “Dead in Hollywood.” Which I doubt is what Max and Igor were going for.

Download the song here, and then let us know what you think in the comments section. Blunt Force Trauma comes out March 29 on Roadrunner; I’m holding out hope that this song isn’t representative of the quality of the remainder of the record.

-AR

To say that Max Cavalera put metal on the map isn’t exactly accurate; metal’s formative years dealt with pond-crossing pollination between Europe and the U.S. But Sepultura helped bring the idea that metal was a global entity into being, from their early death metal albums, proving them more than competen,t to their later thrash/groove metal records, which combined primal heaviness with South American instrumentation. Max has continued this in Soulfly, which, despite  hisliving in the U.S. for the last decade and a half, still includes bits of his heritage. Though Sabbath, Priest, Maiden, and so forth may have (unintentionally) presented metal as a mainly Anglo-Saxon phenomenon, Sepultura proved that if metal were going to be adored worldwide, it would be made worldwide as well. Their far-reaching success (both in the form of Max Cavalera’s Soulfly and the current incarnation of Sepultura) cements their very important place in metal.

Despite being in the game for more than twenty-five years, Max hasn’t shown any sign of slowing down. He founded Cavalera Conspiracy with his formerly estranged brother/ex-Sepultura drummer Igor; Soulfly’s recently-released Omen shows the same strength, vitality, and palatable riffs that the band has always been known for; and he’ll no doubt be hitting the road for the foreseeable future. In an interview with MetalSucks conducted shortly before the album’s release, Max talks about making Omen, discusses how he manages to rope in guest performers, and makes some lofty claims about the upcoming Cavalera Conspiracy album.

Click to read more…

Just in case Max Cavalera’s reunion with his brother Igor in The Cavalera Consipiracy wasn’t enough to provoke a few curious listens, Brazil’s favorite metal son has come around again this year with a new release for his long running brainchild, Soulfly. Now while the skepticism of whether the world really needed two new Cavalera outputs in a single year (and not one of them involving a reunion with you-know-who) is probably well deserved, let’s all us keep an open mind to try and see what unique snowflakes we can find in this avalanche of new material.

Click to read more…

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.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/uu9EgfOjBvk" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

-AR

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.

Click to read more…