Sepultura

There’s a few high-profile metal releases floating around right now, not the least of which is the new one from legendary thrashers Sepultura. And it’s pretty hard to feel anything except extreme ambivalence about this one. Taken song by song (especially the first few cuts on the album), Roorback smokes. As always, the Seps manage to tastefully (a tactic Soulfly should study) combine groove and thrash without sounding like nu-metal or tired thrash rehash. Grudgingly, there’s a big "but” coming here: like the band’s last album, Nation, it starts to get bogged down with too much mid-tempo two-note riffing, and it gets boring by album’s end. Emotionally, the band seems to ride a dull balance between anger and nothing at all, which ain’t helping, because I need something to grab a hold of during some of these mid-everything moments. There’s integrity galore here, and this is a fairly solid modern thrash album, played by guys who know what they’re doing. But ultimately and unfortunately, it’s kind of boring.