Blood Rooted - Sepultura

For those of you who haven’t heard of Sepultura (yup, that’s probably most of you) they’re a Brazilian metal band. They emerged as a major name in the early 1990s on Roadrunner Records, alongside Machine Head and Fear Factory, thus pre-dating the appearance of nu-metal, though they were arguably an important influence on that genre and bridge with the ‘old school’. Their 1996 album ‘Roots’ is widely regarded ...
...blending Brazilian tribal influences and thrash metal to surprisingly good and varied effect.

Shortly after ‘Roots’, however, they split up. Lead singer Max Cavalera left, forming his own Brazilian metal band, the fairly similar but slightly more commercial Soulfly (who released their third album, ‘3’ in summer 2002). The rest of Sepultura (including Max’s brother Igor on drums) continued as Sepultura ... more

For those of you who haven’t heard of Sepultura (yup, that’s probably most of you) they’re a Brazilian metal band. They emerged as a major name in the early 1990s on Roadrunner Records, alongside Machine Head and Fear Factory, thus pre-dating the appearance of nu-metal, though they were arguably an important influence on that genre and bridge with the ‘old school’. Their 1996 album ‘Roots’ is widely regarded as one of the seminal metal albums of the 1990s, blending Brazilian tribal influences and thrash metal to surprisingly good and varied effect.

Shortly after ‘Roots’, however, they split up. Lead singer Max Cavalera left, forming his own Brazilian metal band, the fairly similar but slightly more commercial Soulfly (who released their third album, ‘3’ in summer 2002). The rest of Sepultura (including Max’s brother Igor on drums) continued as Sepultura - recruiting new singer Derrick Green they released the rather sub-standard ‘Against’ on which the band struggled to re-find their feet, before returning to form with ‘Sepulnation’.

And that brings us nicely back to this release, essentially a Sepultura ‘odds n sods’ collection, featuring some demos, rare tracks and some live recordings. I’m not sure exactly when it was released - it must have been after the ‘Roots’ recording sessions, so presumably it was after that album; though I don’t know whether it was before or after Max left the band. [If Dooyoo are right, it's 1997 - just after Max left I believe]. Slightly immaterial really, he’s still very much part of them as far as this material is concerned at least.

This was one of the first metal albums I ever bought (at the same time as Coal Chamber’s self-titled debut and Fear Factory’s Remanufacture album). I wasn’t sure quite what to expect, but it impressed me - and has grown on me more since. Opener ‘Procreation (Of The Wicked)’ is absolutely phenomenal. It demonstrates that you don’t have to be fast to be heavy. Especially in their earlier days, Sepultura were prone to use fast thrashy guitars to cover limited ability. This song, a Celtic Frost cover, is completely different. A strong, slow, pounding drum beat sets the song off perfectly, and Max’s vocals are also pretty good - although they could be clearer. All the same, it’s a shame this track got relegated to this collection - it could have been a hit and even Tom G. Warrior (original Celtic Frost singer) is such a big admirer he’s even began covering the track with his new band (Apollyon Sun)…

There’s no let up on the second track either, ‘Inhuman Nature’ is another of my favourites. Slightly less musically powerful, it’s made up for by Max’s lyrical diatribe:
‘We poison the planet
Seas contaminated by acid rain
We poison the planet
To alleviate of the pain
Of what we’ve done to each other
And what’s done to us
Call it human nature
But it’s inhumane’

In fact, the opening songs let Max onto quite a rant. Tracks three and four (‘Policia’ and ‘War’) letting him vent his spleen on two more favourite topics - ‘Policia’ being fairly average Sepultura, but ‘War’ combines a powerful chorus with an interesting backing to make another very good track. And to round that off, we have the Black Sabbath cover ‘Symptom of the Universe’ - again very powerful, and fitting in perfectly.

The next few tracks are mainly outtakes from the ‘Roots’ sessions, but some of which are very good. ‘Dusted’ features Mike Patton (of Faith No More, Mr Bungle, Fantomas and other yhwman-approved bands) on vocals. ‘Drug Me’ is (I think) a Dead Kennedys cover. There’s an early demo of ‘Roots Bloody Roots’ before the lyrics were finished, and there’s the ‘Master Vibe Mix’ of ‘Lookaway’ (featuring Mike Patton, KoRn’s Jonathan Davis and Limp Bizkit/ex-House of Pain DJ Lethal) - though standard versions of both these two can be found on the ‘Roots’ album, they’re good tracks and worthy of being here.

Finally the album ends with seven live tracks from the ‘Chaos AD’ era. Early Sepultura were never quite as impressive to my ears, but here they’d reached a fairly decent standard. I admit by this point in the album my attention tends to wonder, and this all sounds a little the same. Still they blast through ‘Refuse/Resist’, ‘Slave New World’, ‘Propaganda’ and end with the fierce attack on genetic modification that is ‘Biotech is Godzilla’. I’ve not heard many live Sepultura tracks, but in my experience of Soulfly Max has a habit of working the crowd up - leading repetitive chants of ‘Soulfly’ and improvising drumming interludes - which is all very well, but could get rather annoying over several tracks. Thankfully all these tendencies are absent here, for the most part you get just the songs with the occasional announcement and a brief rant about the ‘f***ing ar****les in the press’ before ‘Propaganda’.

So overall, I found this a pretty impressive CD. Without the live material, it would’ve been too short for an album, but together it makes a decent collection for any Sepultura fan. I got the 2CD ‘Roots of Sepultura' edition of ‘Roots’, which had a bonus disc of rare material - mostly early demos - and I think this disc (that is ‘Blood-Rooted’) is probably of superior rarity value, and certainly a better listen.

If you don’t have ‘Roots’ yet, buy that first. If you like that, and want to try more of Sepultura, then I’d certainly recommend this as a possible second purchase. It was recently re-released, so should be available at a cheap enough price in sales (along with much of the old Sepultura back catalogue).

Band: Sepultura
Album: Blood-Rooted
Release: 1997
Duration: 66 minutes
Rating: 8/10
 

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