Continuing our salute to Sepultura this week, as mentioned on yesterday’s Manic Monday, although the band will always be synonymous with thrash/death metal, in this writer’s opinion, they don’t really get enough credit for their experimental streak that particularly reared its head on their last album with founding vocalist Max Cavalera: Roots. Not only did the band fully embrace drop-D tuning and reduce guitar solos to a minimum, but they also leaned further into the tribal influences they explored on their prior album Chaos A.D. “Ratamahatta” is probably the most obvious example of that, but tracks like “Attitude”, with its use of the berimbau at the beginning of the track, and it’s brooding heaviness that slowly builds throughout before ultimately pummeling the listener into submission, might be the best representation of sound captured on Roots overall.
Check out this awesome footage of the band performing the track live in studio (which of course features that aforementioned berimbau) and witness the band conjure up something truly distinctive and innovative, but still uncompromisingly heavy:
