Ελληνικά
Last Updated on 10:30 AM by Giorgos Tsekas
Genre: Tribal/Death/Thrash/Groove
Country: Brazil
Label: Nuclear Blast Records
Year: 2018
For some reason in a recent interview Max Cavalera described his new album sound as “tribal-death-thrash.” Forgive me if I’m wrong but for almost 30 years senior Cavalera plays strictly this jungle fever meets urban groove thrash/death hybrid that millions out there adore and millions still follow all these years. So I don’t see any reason to give emphasis to a phenomenical back-to-the-roots approaching as I don’t see any return on the Chaos A.D. era as Max never escaped the golden prison he created -with his back then comrades-, that to be more accurate is actually at the same time his safe place. So as Soulfly’s new and 11th studio album has all the potential to be added in your discotheque but at the same time as the band does very much here nothing differently than they have in the past you might be in the weird position of not knowing what to do…Let me give you a help hand…‘Ritual’ is an honest and definitely worthy album. Actually we can’t pretend that we don’t see that Max is on fire right now. Max short time before wrote Cavalera Conspiracy’s ‘Psychosis’ that was a killer album and in ‘Ritual’ he takes the flame of it and its shock wave and blends it with the aura of the celebration tour with Igor in order to take a boost and create another record that will keep his myth alive and kicking. And he does that almost perfectly. Cavalera (with Lamb of God frontman’s help Randy Blythe) narrates the twisted story of Hellraiser’s Cenobite on “Dead Behind the Eyes” (originally titled “Cenobites”), takes a dive on early Soulfly’s days with “Back to the Primitive”, remembers the ‘Archangel’ successful pattern on “Evil Empowered”, pays tribute to Black Flag’s “Rise Above” while he gives us a strong Motorhead dose with “Feedback!” and a Chaos A.D. punch with “Under Rapture” that features Immolation’s Ross Dolan growls. Excellent production, strong riffage, impressive sound and excellent artwork cover. And a an instrumental 3 and a half minutes long composition based on a saxophone with the company of a Spanish guitar is an awful ending. Just for the record!
4,5/6
