Lines In Wax

TWELVE YEARS OF UNWANTED OPINION

Day: February 23, 2023

Sepultura – Roots (1996)
metal

Sepultura – Roots (1996)

Roots is a strange one. I can understand why people would be pissed off at Sepultura for steering away from thrash and going into this super down-tuned, groovy territory. But, you gotta give it to Max for getting a hold of a musical vision and just completely committing to it. It is easy to dismiss Roots as “MaX hEaRd KoRn AnD WAs liKe – lEt’S jUsT Do ThiS LOL”, because after his time in Sepultura, Max continued entirely in this vein with Soulfly. This is what he wanted to do. Ya’ll thrash nerds are just going to have to live with that. But, my embracing of such a fact does not mean that I think Roots is the best thing ever recorded. It’s something of a kick in the dick that if you watch live or video footage of the band playing this kind of super-heavy music with Brazilian percussive instrumentation over the top of it, then you realise just how well this stuff can work. However, that doesn’t translate super well onto the record. Tracks are a hit and miss mish-mash of intense grooves or bad nu-metal, and the vocals are much in the same vein. Roots is an awkward record for an awkward time for metal in general, but it is well worth checking out from an historical standpoint.

Chthonic Force – Delirium Tremens: The Best Of Chthonic Force (2007)
noise & power electronics

Chthonic Force – Delirium Tremens: The Best Of Chthonic Force (2007)

I’ll be completely honest with you: I was totally drawn into this by the art alone. That kind of chosen artistic representation for your sound almost guarantees you a select number of sounds, and power electronics is high on that list. That is, of course, what we have here. The trouble is, is that this is one of the cringiest things I have ever heard. Let’s get it out of the way: there is nothing wrong with the music / noise here. It is atmospheric and eery, and uses the full soundstage to come at you from all angles. There is all sorts of artefacts and creepy additions coming in left and right field, which just makes you even more anxious as the main course of each piece just loops over and over in intensity. No, my problem is with the vocal contributions. There’s a variety of contributors here, and as I understand Delirium Tremens is a compilation of sorts, so some headway is given here for it to be a bit disjointed. But daaaamnnn, this shit is bad. We’re talking nervous teenagers reading their own erotic fan-fiction kinda bad, with unnecessary big words and over-emphasised narration that just cringes me out in the worst possible way. It’s like getting to the seventh circle of hell and finding that it consists entirely of bad slam poetry. Not even Boyd Rice (whatever you think of him) can really bring anything of value to this collection, instead offering cringe-inducing diatribes about BDSM and power play. It’s a no from me. Speaking of Delirium Tremens, I’m gonna need a glass of the beer of the same name to get over this shit.