 |
| |
|
| |
Album Review
by SashaS
23-9-2002
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
| Original Sepultura's last date |
|
Sepultura: 'Under A Pale Grey Sky'
(Roadrunner)
Sepultura: great document of the last stand
In the mid-1996 Sepultura were booked to play Monsters of Rock one-day festival at Donington but it turned out to be far from a regular show. Max Cavalera’s adopted son met a fatal accident and he, with wife/band’s manager Gloria, flew back to Arizona leaving the remaining three members to face the crowds. They managed with help of some other perfumers, played some songs as instrumentals and it really worked, as a completely different take of the band’s material.
Although there is no proof, thence could have been the beginning of the line-up’s end that occurred early in 1997. But, on the night this album is the recording of, everything seemed to be working just swell. There had been no visible tension on the 16th of December 1996 at the Brixton Academy, Max Cavalera remarked only a few months back. Nobody else, including this reviewer, could observe anything else but the greatest of shows.
The band were promoting that year’s album, ‘Roots’, that really set the standard for the whole ethno-heavy rock. Combining hardest sonic brutality, de-tuned chordage with South American flavoured spirit and radical lyrics, the band created intensely awesom soundscapes that bewitched with vibrancy. The ‘tribe’ vibe worked magically in live situations and that night was sure special, near enough to Xmas to blindingly launch the whole hard partying season.
With the sound bigger than the venue itself, Sepultura simply mauled from the first note, flattening everything in sight, tolerating no sissies and proclaiming ‘revolucion!’ with every single riff. The songs dripped with ‘everything’s wrong’ venom, bile against injustice firmly stuck in its jaws of anger, its angst as palatable as energy the crowd exuded with every drumbeat. The Sep-boys simply pillaged emotions with ‘Attitude’, ‘Slave New World’, ‘Dictatorsh*t’, ‘Troops of Doom’, ending with Motorhead’s ‘Orgasmatron’. Solid killers.
The complete show of 27 tracks over two hours are split on 2 CDs and it is the finest live metal album you’ll ever hear, alas also reminding you that nothing since… has lived up to this standard. Damn it, all the best things must pass first and even when you try to recreate it, it can never get back to where it ceased… This is the document when Sepultura gelled like make-up sex for the last time almost six years ago.
8/10
SashaS
23-9-2002
Sepultura’s album ‘Under A Pale Grey Sky’ is released 23 Sept. 2002 on Roadrunner
|
|
|
