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Sepultura: Dante XXI
24/03/06 || Statik Majik
I’m not even sure if I should do this review or not… The thing is, the latest releases from Sepultura haven’t tickled my penis all that much ( Note by The Lord: I know man, that was me tickling it… ). There were a few nice tunes on “Nation”, but that doesn’t remove the fact that after “Roots” they’ve gone more or less down the drain. Well, if you are a hardcore Sepultura-fan, then you’ll probably love their latest stuff, but to find death metal-ish mumbo-jumbo in their albums has been a fucken impossible task.
So…
After the intro we’re introduced with a minute and a half worth of Andreas playing the same riff over and over again. Actually sounding fucking cool, but then Derrick opens his mouth and the song starts to suck. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming him for the suck-factor, I just hoped for the song to have more of an old-Sepultura kind of approach to it, but no, not a fucking chance. The song is so much hardcore that it ain’t even funny. How fucking difficult could it be to create something similar to “Roots” or “Chaos AD”? After all, you still have 3 of the “old” members/composers in the band, right? That’s like 75 percent of the formula that used to create killer death metal tunes ( Note by The Lord: I learn something new every day. Sepultura is death metal on those albums? ). Yeah, I’m one of those people who label Sepultura as death metal, because that was the closest genre their music could fit ( Note by The Lord: Man, we are losing you to alcoholism ). Or at least used to label them like that.
Wait a minute.
Actually… let’s even wait for two minutes.
Now… I think I had the wrong fucking attitude to start with. You see, I’m constantly trying to find similaritites to the Max Cavalera -era ( Note by The Lord: Why not just name it “Caval-era”? ) and that definitely blurs my objectivity. The thing is, Sepultura will never again sound like they did with Max if he’s not in the band. The musical direction we were left with on “Roots” continues/evolves with Soufly, not Sepultura. So I must at least admit that Sepultura had the balls to take a totally different path after Max’s departure, and stay more or less true to their roots. And those roots grow in completely different soil compared to death metal.
In other words: even if this is Sepultura we’re talking about, it should be considered as some other band instead in order to bring even a slightest bit of objectivity to the table. I can accept that this is how Sepultura sounds these days and there’s seemingly not a chance they’ll ever go back to the musical direction of “Arise” or “Chaos AD”. And I’m sure they don’t even intend to. They’ve been hardcore/punk fans since day one, and that always had a major impact on their music.
But to get back to the review: “Fighting on” was the first track that I actually enjoyed. I wouldn’t call the following tracks, “Ostia” and “Buried words”, bad songs either. And fuck me sideways, “Nuclear seven” happens to be a rather catchy tune as well. Too bad that these examples are the closest to heavier shit they’ll ever get to on “Dante XXI”.
The rest of the tracks lean much more to the hardcore side of the scale. Which I find hard to make comments about, cos it ain’t my kind of music. At all. I don’t know… I’m not saying that this sucks, because it doesn’t. Sepultura is still formed of talented musicians that compose technically solid tracks. And I have to admit that I don’t find Derricks vocals as irritating anymore. They’re more than good as long as I remember not to compare ‘em to Max Cavalera’s vocals.
So to sum it up:
The few tracks I liked were definitely worth 7,5 but unfortunatelly I ain’t reviewing single tracks here.
6 /10
But at least the album artwork looks nice. Hey, I had to add something positive in here as well.
- Information
- Released: 2006
- Label: Steamhammer/SPV
- Website: sepultura.uol.com.br
- Band
- Derrick Green: vocals
- Andreas Kisser: guitars
- Paolo Jr.: bass
- Igor Cavalera: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. Intro #4
- 02. Dark wood of error
- 03. Convicted in life
- 04. City of Dis
- 05. False
- 06. Fighting on
- 07. Intro #2
- 08. Ostia
- 09. Buried words
- 10. Nuclear seven
- 11. Repeating the horror
- 12. Intro #1
- 13. Crown and miter
- 14. Intro #3
- 15. Still flame
