688. Arise - Sepultura

I think that it would be fair to say that this was not an album either of us was particularly looking forward to. However, as a bit of a Metallica fan in my youth (pre-St Anger, obviously), and with some knowledge of the Metal genre, I thought that I may be pleasantly surprised.

I wasn't.

I'm sure that there are fans of this band who would be able to talk at length about the intricacy, intensity and attention to detail of it, and wax lyrical about how they have managed to combine South American influences naturally within the Thrash Metal genre. To be honest, aside from a couple of uses of non-traditional instruments, I can't hear that myself. I get the intensity, but the majority of the songs do end up sounding the same. For every interesting chord progression, there are a few dozen that just follow a very standard pattern, albeit very quickly and with a lot of distortion.

The two songs that were palatable were Dead Embryonic Cells and Orgasmatron. They had an element of melody to them that was more interesting. The rest I would genuinely struggle to describe to you, and I listened to the album at least seven times all the way through. Perhaps it is me getting old and soft, but with Metallica I enjoyed the variety of the music they produced, and this just doesn't have that range. I can appreciate the technical demands of such playing, which probably explains the fact that it did get a score above a two, but virtuosity is not alone enough. 

There is one more Sepultura album in the book, Roots, which is supposed to be the better of the two. however, I still can't say I'm much looking forward to that number coming up, if I'm honest.

Chloe's rating: 3
Chloe's favourite track: 10. Orgasmatron
Olly's rating: 3
Olly's favourite track: 2 Dead Embryonic Cells

Next week we have selected 569. I against I - Bad Brains from 1986. Unfamiliar with this group, so looking forward to it, especially as the description doesn't use the term "Thrash" at all.