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Sepultura: Roots

26/08/09 || Smalley

Intensely divisive album we have here; some consider “Roots” one of Sepultura’s greatest moments, while others say it was the end of good Sepultura. Me? I’m somewhere in-between the two, but lean more toward the former; while “Roots” does have a less dynamic style compared to “Chaos A.D.” (and comes nowhere near that classic), it’s still well-done, extremely entertaining metal, a good deal of that owing to the indigenous spice Sep added to it. You see, they visit a tribe of Xavante Indians in Brazil to obtain some home-grown inspiration, as well as recordings of the tribe to use directly on “Roots”, and the band even played some traditional, non-metal instruments themselves, but alas, I’m getting too far ahead; let’s go into the nuts-and-bolts of this thing already.

“Roots bloody roots” opens the album up, and I have to say… I hate it. It’s a fucken dumb, droning, repetitive, and annoying song (partly due to Max’s overbearing vocals, I hate to admit), and a bad entry point for a good album. The stupidity of it in no way hints at the awesomeness that is to come, starting with “Attitude”, which starts with a spacey, echoing berimbau intro (just watch the video…), and continues with brutal, sludge-y, down-tuned guitarwork, and excellent, throatily-screamed vox from Max (and both factors will be constants on this record as well).

“Cut-throat” is blunter, without as much finesse, but the pounding groove it has still keeps it pretty good. Then, “Ratamahatta” takes us on a wild ride through the musical jungle of Brazil, with native musician Carlinhos Brown and Max doing frantic, call-and-repeat vocals, Carlinhos later doing crazy scat-singing, and awesome, indigenous percussion work backing it all up. It’s a favela full of fun if I don’t say so myself! After that, “Breed apart” comes off as a bit dull, but remains enjoyable, with some nice drone vocals (hell, I don’t know what to call them) coming from Max.

Unfortunately, “Straighthate” and “Spit” aren’t just dull in-comparison tracks, they’re just plain dull; while the latter song is a bit better, both of them annoy and bore, bringing up painful memories of the album opener; no thanks! The twisted
“Lookaway” is a very welcome change from that, even though it has (gasp) Jonathan Davis on guest vox and DJ Lethal of Limp Bizkit giving scratchwork. But honestly, though Lethal’s scratching does sound a little ridiculous, Davis’s presence really does work, greatly adding to the song’s demented, eerie, slow-burning nature.

“Dusted” and “Born stubborn” are both energetic offerings of the “Roots” style, and I have no complaints regarding them. “Jasco” takes into the album’s soft side, with Max and Andreas Kisser doing a pleasant, acoustic guitar duel, and is followed by “Itsári”, which continues with the acoustic stuff, and also adds in nice percussion work, and more importantly, catchy, rhythmic chanting from the Xavante tribe. Very cool song, but before we can get too relaxed, “Ambush” well, ambushes us, with more heavy riffing, and Max’s screams of “When you go down, when you go down (motherfucker!)/When you go down… YOU GO DOWN FIGHTING!” for its chorus.

“Ambush” would’ve been a logical closer for “Roots”, but Sepultura wanted to keep making music, so they recorded “Endangered species” as well. But, I can’t complain, since it is a doomy little tune that I enjoy; I consider it a bonus on top of all the other cool shit on the album. But “Dictatorshit”…? A stupid, useless song, and the pointless “Canyon jam” is even worse, consisting of ambient jungle noise, occasional gun shots, and hesitant tribal music that goes nowhere, and the track lasts over thirteen minutes too! I don’t know why Sep just didn’t end things at “species”, but at least the lame final two tracks don’t negate the good stuff here, so they aren’t really a big deal.

So, a few weaker, annoying tracks lessen my opinion of this record somewhat, but there are still too many good songs for me to dislike it, and not have a lot of fun. When you compare this to “Chaos A.D.”, the songwriting isn’t as good, nor are the riffs, or the solos, or the drumming (though I think they’re all still good…); the bass does improve from the sludgier, doomier tone Sep took, but bass is usually the least important thing in metal anyway. But, it isn’t always possible for bands to keep moving “up” with their sound, wish that as we may, sometimes they just have to move sideways with it, and Sepultura did just that through the exotic, off-beat approach they gave to “Roots”. As I said before, this remains well-done, entertaining metal, no matter how it fares within Sep’s body of work, and was also the last thing Max recorded in Sepultura, so do his memory a favor and go enjoy “Roots”, alrighty?

Information
Released: 1996
Label: Roadrunner
Website: http://sepultura.uol.com
Band
Max Cavalera: vocals, guitar, acoustic guitar, berimbau
Andreas Kisser: guitar, acoustic guitar, sitar
Paulo Jr.: bass, timbau grandé
Igor Cavalera: drums, timbau, djembe

Tracklist
01. Roots Bloody Roots
02. Attitude
03. Cut-Throat
04. Ratamahatta
05. Breed Apart
06. Straighthate
07. Spit
08. Lookaway
09. Dusted
10. Born Stubborn
11. Jasco
12. Itsári
13. Ambush
14. Endangered Species
15. Dictatorshit
16. Canyon Jam

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