Time Signature Toxic...

Genre: alternative metal

This is a metal album by a non-metal band. This means that, while the majority of tracks on this album are metal tracks, or metal oriented tracks, there are a number of tracks that are not categorizable as metal, but which belong more to Peste & Sida's normal style, which is a sort of new wave inspired post-punk rock.

So let's get those tracks out of the way first. "Ter Alguém" is a reggae track, while "Deixa de Filosofar" is a funk song, "Década de Salomé" is a cover of a Portuguese political song by a famous Portuguese sort of protest singer, and "Ska Caustico" is an unplugged acustic song. All of these tracks are good tracks, but they're not metal and thus probably irrelevant to most MMA users.

Now, let's turn to the metal and hard rock tracks on this album. The opening track "Peste até o Fim" is a sort of hybrid punk and metal song which basically takes hard rock derived riffs and plays them at punk rock speed. "Funky Riot" is not a funk song, but a groovy metal song with a main riff which is akin to the groove metal riffs of the 1990s, but what really sets this track apart is the use of a horn section which actually suits the kind of dark atmosphere of the music quite well. "Ska Core Eco" is basically a so-called ska-core song which blends ska and hard core punk, and for the metal heads, there is a bridge the contain some metal riffing, too. "Trash Metal" is a crossover humorous cross-over thrash song, and "Trash Core", "Traz Tudo" and the hidden track at the end are various reprises of that track. "Acorda" opens out with a fast and furious metal guitar riff and then incorporates incorprates slap bass into the track, generating a sort of funk metal tune; which is way more metal than funk, though, and which never quite reaches the level of brilliancy of the likes of Living Colour, Faith No More, Infectious Grooves or Suicidal Tendencies (in their funky era). "Continuo a Cantar" is a heavier and perhaps slightly groovier metal track which has a certain dark feel to it, and whose main riff is, not original, but very cool and also retro in the sense that it sounds very 1990s. "Crime e Castiga" is a dark metal tune which makes use of riffage that could be associated with industrial metal, blending it in with a fast shreddy guitar pattern that almost reminds me of death-thrash metal.

Personally, I would give this album four stars, but considering that this is a heavy metal oriented site, the presence of a handful of non-metal tracks compels me to keep the rating at three stars. I wouldn't recomend this to any metal fan for the same reson. However, this album is undoubtedly a metal album, and what makes it more interesting is that Peste & Sida takes metal and incorporate elements from their normal new age and punk derived style of rock music and fuse them into the metal, generating a type of heavy metal music that has Portuguese rock music history runningthrough its veins (not a lot of people know that Portugal was under dictatorship up until 1974, which has had an impact on how rock and metal music, and other forms of cultural expression, were embraced and assimilated in the country. So, with that in mind, this alternative metal album would certainly be an interesting addition to any metal collection. But, as mentioned, it is not something that appeals to every single metalhead out there.