SEPULTURA:

"The Mediator Between Head And Hands Must Be The Heart"                

1. Trauma of War 

2. The Vatican

3. Impending Doom 

4. Manipulation of Tragedy

5. Tsunami 

6. The Bliss of Ignorants

7. Grief 

8. The Age of the Atheist

9. Obsessed 

10. Da Lama Ao Caos

11. Stagnate State of Affairs

Produced by Ross Robinson

Mixed by Steve Evetts

  http://www.sepultura.com.br/ 

 

Line-Up:
Sepultura is: Derrick Green - Andreas Kisser - Paulo Xisto - Eloy Casegrande

 

 

One dimensional.

I’m just going to come out and say it, THE ALBUM TITLE IS TOO LONG! It should have just been called, “The Mediator” and left it at that! That way it has a little mystery to it instead of a vague reference to a movie that came out at the beginning of the 20^{th century!}

Okay, I got that out of my system thank you for letting me vent. TMBHHMBH, I’m sorry, even the acronym sucks, I’m just going to call it the new album or The Mediator.

I found this album hard to dissect because it has a sound and a feel all it’s own that’s distinctly different than they’ve had in the past. The sound of the album as a whole reminds me of a mix of Dante XXI and Beneath the Remains. I would say the whole thing sounds like a modern version of Beneath the Remains only less thrashy and more death metal sounding, but that’s not quite right, Dante XXI is the best comparison along with Beneath. The Mediator has a dark, brooding sound to it that sounds like it would go over well live. Manipulation of Tragedy as a song on my mp3 player sounds intense but a little flat, if this was played live, on the other hand, would sound fantastic.

Let me back up for a second, I know you know that this album brings back Ross Robinson as a wild and crazy idea from Monte Connor, former A&R executive for Roadrunner Records, current A&R for Nuclear Blast. It was an attempt to bring a little magic from it’s old days of “Roots Bloody Roots” I would imagine, but it doesn’t even sound like that album in the least. About the only thing that I hear Ross Robinson’s sound on is the drumming. It sounds like the drumming on the first Slipknot record…which Robinson produced. That’s it though; .I’m not knocking him or anything, production wise, I think he did a great job. He helped Sepultura paint this dark picture that is still metal without sounding like they’re trying to be on the cutting edge of something. If anything, he made the band sound fuller than it has in years.

My favorite song on the disc has got to be “The Vatican.” Although, I found the intro too long, the song is very heavy, very dark, very Sepultura. This would have been a hit for the band had it came out during the 90’s. “Obsessed” features Dave Lombardo playing miscellaneous drums on this track which adds a lot of depth to the track, almost has an impending doom sound to it, but it’s quite diverse, it has the crunching guitars and it has Black Sabbath like guitars in it ever so briefly.

My overall opinion of the album, it’s certainly different from “Kairos” and “A-Lex” but I like those albums better than this one. This is an interesting step, I won’t say it sucks but I thought it was a little one-dimensional in terms of guitar tones and sounds, it became a little redundant after a while. For the past few times I’ve listed to this album, I’ve only listened to “The Vatican” “Obsessed” and “Da Lama Ao Caos” probably because those are the only tracks that really stand out to me. As much as I love this band, I’m not sure if I would recommend it to the masses, definitely see them live and purchase a few tracks.

This is probably the most critical I’ve been of Sepultura in the 18 or so years I’ve been listening to this band.

8/10

Matthew Haumschild