### Soulfly: Prophecy

#### 01/04/04 || Statik Majik

So, Max Cavalera and Soulfly are back in business. What we have here is their fourth album. Good for Max and the (new) crew. And even better for us. Cos this is the shit that we’ve (well, at least I’ve) been waiting for every since Max left Sepultura in 1996.

Out of the three albums Soulfly released prior to this, “Primitive” is the only one that I still enjoy listening to and is consider it my favourite Soulfly album. Yes, the first one was good, I give you that much. The “3” on the other hand didn’t offer anything new. But what about “Prophecy”? Fuck me sideways, I am not kidding when I tell you that my favourite Soulfly album changed since the fucken day I got my hands on this on. An album that has the Sepultura vibe (or should I say Max vibe?) in it, but done with fresher approach. I hope they’ll play loads of songs from this one during their next tour, because there are shitloads of energetic “headbanging” songs here, I tell you that. “Prophecy”, “Execution style”, “Defeat U”, “I believe”... I can point out immediatelly four strong songs from the album. That’s probably more than three I could point out from the previous album.

There’s no point in going thru this album song by song, cos it would basically be just repeating “this shit is so heavy that it’s not even funny”.

Oh yeah, there are the “mandatory” tribal/etno/whatever jams here too. For example just listen to “Mars”. The song starts as a pretty fucken heavy track, but just listen to what happens after 2 minutes of sheer brutality. Fucken acoustic (flamenco) guitar jamming. Damn, this kind of muzak makes me wanna have a blunt or two. And I don’t even smoke. And just wait until you get to the track 7, “Moses”. Damn, I think that those joints ain’t enough anymore, this requires a bong to say the least. Some heavy shit combined with caribbean rhythms and jamaican sounding dude singing with Max. The outro of this song might be just a tad too long for my taste though.

What I think is “cool” is the fact that David Ellefson makes a guest performance here. David who you ask? Were you born yesterday, I ask you back. The fucken bassplayer of Megadeth, that’s who. Do I have to fucken explain everything.

This album is no exception compared to three previous albums concering the instrumental “Soulfy” track. Yeah, it’s there, the 2nd last track on this album. And “Wings” is definatelly something that I could’ve lived without. Well, no one is forcing me to listen to it, and I’m grateful “Wings” is the last one. Although the last “song”, “the mexican band” kind of outro is fucken hilarious. I give fucken extra half points for that one.

All and all, there seems to be less experimental shit here than on the previous Soulfly albums, and the songs are definatelly much more catchier and brutal. Let’s put it this way: you take the heaviest/catchiest parts from Sepultura’s “Chaos AD” and “Roots” and Soulfly’s “Primitive”, mix them and add something new and voilá, you have Soulfly’s “Prophecy”.

8… I mean 8,5 /10

- Information
- Released: 2004
- Label: Roadrunner
- website www.soulflyweb.com
- Band
- Max Cavalera: vocals, 4-string guitar, berimbau, soul, sitar
- Marc Rizzo: guitar, flamenco guitar
- Bobby Burns: bass on all tracks except
- David Ellefson: bass (tracks 1, 4, 5, 6 and 10)
- Joe Nunez: drums, percussion

- Tracklist
- 01. Prophecy
- 02. Living sacrifice
- 03. Execution style
- 04. Defeat u
- 05. Mars
- 06. I believe
- 07. Moses
- 08. Born again anarchist
- 09. Porrada
- 10. In the meantime
- 11. Soulfly IV
- 12. Wings