Sepultura

Chaos A.D.

Could have been their best.

Review Score:

(6/10)
My introduction to Sepultura was Roots, which totally blew me away. Then I bought Arise and Schizophrenia, and they were even better! Roots was sludgy but heavy and full of experimentation while their earlier efforts (my personal favs) being thrash and really fast and heavy. So with Chaos A.D., what went wrong?

A mixture of two styles that Sepultura did really well could have been great (and it appears that 'great' is how most people view this album). But in my opinion, this falls short of both. The majority of songs aren't that thrashy, and those that are sound very amatuerish and boring compared to what was offered previously (especially "Slave New World" and "Biotech Is Godzilla" - just compare those song structures and riffs to "From The Past Comes The Storms" or "Dead Embryonic Cells"). And as for experimental aspects and acoustic tracks which emulate Brazilian tribe music, only "Kaiwos" comes close to tracks such "Jasco", "Attitude" or "Itsari". And solos? Yes, there may be none on Roots which is (the only) one aspect of this album which is better than Roots. But compare the solos on this to Andreas's lead work on previous albums. Sometimes it's hard to believe its the same group.

It could have been their best album - a collaboration of sounds that Sepultura did better than most. Instead it falls short of both elements instead of fusing them together well and often sounds like a bunch of Sepultura wannabes. There are a few up points, namely Refuse/Resist, Territory (although the solo is terrible) and Kaiwos, but generally this is very disappointing.

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