Sepultura – SepulQuarta
Nuclear Blast
Release Date: 13/08/2021
Running Time: 60:56
Review By Victor Augusto
10/10
Hello everyone. I am Victor Augusto and today I don’t want to write, just as a reviewer, from this beautiful team at Ever Metal. Today, I am here just to share the experience of hearing an album from a band that I have truly admired since I was a young kid from a poor neighbourhood, growing up in a violent city in this land called Brazil. Firstly, thank you to Ever Metal for allowing me to write about it, considering I picked an album that wasn’t available on our review list. As a fan, I just wanted to express the experience of listening to this album from the band’s official streaming platforms.
Let me travel back to the year of 1999 when I was a young teenager, just 15 years old. At that time, I was living in a city called Rio de Janeiro, which is famous for its beautiful nature, but also for all the violence and chaos. My daily feeling, when I lived there, was to be like a prisoner inside all of that poverty and mess. All of this was allied by my family’s lack of money that made my period there seem like a nightmare. As always, I had Heavy Metal as my relief. I clearly remember the day that I was waiting to buy something in a store and I was lucky enough to see an interview with a band, talking about their new line-up and era. Yes, it was Sepultura during the ‘Against Tour’.
“Against”! You’ll all be asking that I must surely have heard about them before this album release?. Of course, I had already heard about Sepultura before, but I had never heard any of their albums. Let me remind you that the neighbourhood I was living in was so poor and Heavy Metal stores were a distant thing from there. I had no money to have access to MTV (which was only available on pay TV) or Heavy Metal magazines. Nevertheless, I started to look for all their CD’s and my huge love for the band began. Considering I discovered them when they were rebuilding after a very difficult period, I can say that I was lucky to see how Andreas Kisser and Paulo Jr (together with all the members at that time) fought to save the band.
From that moment on I have followed every album release, every interview and every tour, anything I can find. I am 100% sure that they’ve worked incredibly hard to put the band where it is now. If I was a fan of what they created in their first ten years of existence, I became even more of a fan watching how they stayed strong, battling to overcome. Today, Andreas Kisser is one of my biggest heroes because of his passion for music and for Sepultura. If all musicians put half of his passion and dedication into their bands, then many of them would be much bigger around the world.
If you have only started to respect the current line-up from their last two albums “Quadra” or “Machine Messiah” then I suggest you go back and listen to what they have created since the “Dante XXI” album, in 2006. Much of the Sepultura spirit on “Quadra” is a mix of everything that happened during these years. “Machine Messiah” was an important step of transition to what they have become nowadays. In addition, you know what happened after the “Quadra” release. The world collapsed because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Do you think that Sepultura stopped because of that? No, they revisited old times and recent times with many guests every Wednesday, and called it SepulQuarta (Quarta means “Wednesday” in Portuguese).
For me this just highlighted how respected they are, from everything they’ve done in the past, together with all the new stuff. Every Wednesday they got together with a special guest to tell stories, talk about the history of the band and play a song with them and it has been very interesting to learn so much about them with almost four decades of existence. SepulQuarta is the album of those collaborations. It is like a live album, but keeping the original essence of the tracks. Songs like ‘Territory’ or ‘Inner Self’ respect the original versions, even though Derrick’s vocals are different from what they used originally
Songs like ‘Vandals Nest’ (which is far from being an old track) received a fresh face with Alex Skolnick (Testament) as special guest, also songs like ‘Hatred Aside’ became fantastic. By the way, I wish that Sepultura would invite one of the guests on this track ,Angélica Burns (Hatefulmurder) to collaborate more, because her vocal is one of the strongest I’ve heard recently. Considering she is singing alongside two other formidable female vocalists from the Brazilian scene she did an absolutely amazing job. Moreover, we can talk about the version of ‘Kaiowas’ that brings the sensibility of a Power Metal guitarist (Angra’s Rafael Bittencourt) alongside strong guitars from Andreas Kisser? Let me remind you that Rafael’s band Angra also released an album full of Brazilian sonority when Sepultura’s “Roots” was released in 1996.
I won’t detail all the tracks. Every single one is an absolute experience. Yes, an amazing experience that recalls the year the song was released, but with a modern sonority. I feel very connected to this album and I think I know the reason why. I have an idea of their struggles from the end of the nineties to where the band are now. For my personal life, things weren’t so different so, considering I had the band’s music as relief during all my life battles to escape the hell I was living, I feel the same when I look at their history. Maybe it is just a coincidence, who knows? It doesn’t matter now anyway, but what does matter?…My answer is “The experience”!
An Experience! Yes, this is how we can describe “SepulQuarta”. Even if this were an album of brand new material it would not be different. It may be a mix of the old and recent from the band, but with the same level of quality as if it were new tracks. It reflects decades of dedication and passion for music. It reflects a band that is always looking ahead and doesn’t stay chained to the past. Personally, this album made me travel in time and made me feel proud to have a Brazilian band like Sepultura that is brutally honest for their fans.
I’m sorry if you wanted a detailed review but I just wanted to share this experience as a longtime fan of Sepultura. I strongly recommend, you too, take the time to listen to “SepulQuarta” with an open heart, to find your emotions! Maybe, you can create your own review in your mind.
Thanks, Sepultura!
‘Mask’ feat Devin Townsend (Live SepulQuarta Sessions Video)
TRACKLISTING:
01. Territory (feat. David Ellefson)
02. Cut-Throat (feat. Scott Ian)
03. Sepulnation (feat. Danko Jones)
04. Inner Self (feat. Phil Rind)
05. Hatred Aside (feat. Angélica Burns, Mayara Puertas & Fernanda Lira)
06. Mask (feat. Devin Townsend)
07. Fear, Pain, Chaos, Suffering (feat. Emmily Barreto)
08. Vandals Nest (feat. Alex Skolnick)
09. Slave New World (feat. Matthew K. Heafy)
10. Ratamahatta” (feat. Joao Barone & Charles Gavin)
11. Apes Of God (feat. Rob Cavestany)
12. Phantom Self (feat. Mark Holcomb)
13. Slaves Of Pain (feat. Frédéric Leclercq & Marcello Pompeu)
14. Kaiowas (feat. Rafael Bittencourt)
15. Orgasmatron (feat. Phil Campbell)
LINE-UP:
Derrick Green – Vocals
Andreas Kisser – Guitars
Eloy Casagrande – Drums
Paulo Jr. – Bass
LINKS:
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