SEPULTURA — Against (review)

SEPULTURA — Against album cover Album · 1998 · Groove Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
adg211288
Sepultura’s return after the departure of original frontman Max Cavalera was bound to split fans, and because of his absence from Against, their first album without him, this album is devilishly underrated. It is an album that I’ll admit does take a fair few listens to get into, but once I did I discovered that it is a huge improvement from the band’s final offering with Max. Vocalist Derrick Green has his similarities to Cavalera, yet brings his own touch to the sound of Sepultura, mostly with the fact that not all his vocal lines are shouted. Derrick on occasion does actually sing. His growl isn’t as powerful as Max’s was, but with a vast improvement on song quality, it doesn’t matter. His cleaner vocals bring new variety to the sound, which is not so much of a departure from Max’s Roots experiment, with the presence of tribal instruments and the members of a tribe themselves appearing on the album. The major difference that Against has with Roots is that this time, the experiment of mixing tribal world music sounds with metal has actually worked much better.

One of the main reasons that I think that a listener must allow Against to grow on them is because of the opener, the title track Against. It’s just not one of the best songs of the album, and if this is someone’s introduction to the Derrick era of Sepultura, they can be forgiven for thinking thoughts such as ‘Where’s Max?’.

Luckily Against does not set an example for most of the album, which is packed with killer tribal influenced metal. Choke, Rumors, Old Earth, Boycott, Common Bonds, Unconscious, Kamaitachi, and Hatred Aside are all great songs. I can’t say there’s anything as good as the Sepultura thrash classics like Inner Self, Arise, Refuse/Resist or even Roots Bloody Roots from Against’s weak predecessor, Roots, but they are all solid songs, written and in some cases played better than the majority of Roots was. There is not a completely duff track on here. There is mediocre material, but it’s not so bad that its going to drag this album’s score down drastically. Reza is easily the weakest song here. It almost sounds like the band were trying to do a grindcore track with some tribal stuff going in some sections. It’s not completely awful, but when put against the rest of the album, this is the runt of the litter, with the almost pointless instrumental F.O.E. a close second.

In summary the first era of Sepultura ended with a major disappointment, with this, the dawning of Sepultura’s second era, the band have produced not only an album to redeem Roots, but a firm start for their new frontman Derrick. Sepultura lives another day. I give it 3.5 stars.
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