UMUR
"Sepulquarta" is a live in the studio album release by Brazilian thrash/groove metal act Sepultura. The album was released through Nuclear Blast in August 2021. As the COVID-19 pandemic prevented Sepultura from touring extensively in support of the release of their 15th full-length studio album "Quadra" from February 2020, the band opted to work on another project while they were under lockdown along with the rest of the world.
The 15 tracks featured on "Sepulquarta" are songs from the band´s back catalogue (including the cover of "Orgasmatron" by Motörhead). All tracks were recorded during the months of April to December 2020. All parts were recorded at the musicans home studios, and in addition to Sepultura performing their parts, all tracks feature at least one guest musician. Some are prolific artists like Devin Townsend, Scott Ian, and Alex Skolnick, while others are less prolific or at least not as prolific as the mentioned artists. All parts are recorded live in the studio (I´m not 100% if all artists performed at the same time), and the sound quality is a bit raw and the volumes are not always perfectly matched (especially the vocals are at times a little low in the mix). You can clearly hear what is going on though, and which song is being played, so this is not a lo-fi sound production, it´s just not how you´d normally expect a studio recording to sound or a live album for that matter.
"Sepulquarta" features a good selection of tracks from Sepultura´s career and the tracklist is well balanced with both heavy groove oriented tracks, thrashy tracks, and some of their more exotic tribal influenced tracks like "Ratamahatta" and "Kaiowas". It all works really well, but I do wish the tracks would have featured stronger or at least more dominant guest performances. Neither David Ellefson, Phil Rind or Scott Ian for example make much of an impression on the songs they play on. In fact I didn´t notice their contributions at all. It´s of course a little different when the guest is a vocalist, but Derrick Green performs the majority of the vocals on the album, even on the songs which feature guest vocalists.
"Sepulquarta" is upon conclusion an interesting project, and it´s well worth a purchase just to hear the skillful performances of Sepultura (damn Eloy Casagrande is a great drummer). A few more contributions from the guests could have made the album even more interesting, but as it is, it´s a solid collection of Sepultura songs performed with a twist. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.