Album Review: Beneath The Remains by Sepultura

So I've had this album for a while, since before Christmas, and this is easily one of my favorite albums now. It's a classic. Now if you have no idea who i'm talking about, Sepultura is a Brazillian band who pretty much sucks now so i've heard. But there earlier stuff, genius, but then they traded it for selling out on the groove metal bandwagon and started sucking. This here, however, is a classic in thrash metal in everyway. Now, this album (and its follow up, Arise which i will also be reviewing) is debated as to wheater it's thrash or death metal. I say thrash metal, the music is definitly thrash metal. The vocals are why it's debated. They aren't the cookie monster vocals most people associate with death metal, nor are they the, well, I'm not sure how to describe it, low to mid ranged scream of early death metal that was used by bands such as Death. No, these are more of a grunt. Although they can get somewhat gutteral at times, such as on parts of "Stronger Than Hate". But I consider this thrash metal. Really agressive thrash metal, but still. Sort of like Slayer, but better. Although it does let up at times more, and this helps it. This stuff sounds genuinely angry and they have a reason to be, living under a dictatorship and all. Unlike say, Rage Aginst The Machine, where they're all from the mean streets of the suburbs. But one thing I want to mention is the drumming, Igor Cavalera, is in my opinion, one of the best drummers out there, he's spot on, interesting, and it all flows really well. He plays at these speeds for like 5 minutes at a time. He's quite good. But anyway, do you want brutality? Melody? Really good solos? Head-bangy rffs? There all here. I'm not going to go on about the songs, but the first 6 songs, and the last one, are great, the 7th I haven't listened too in a long time and the 8th is totally filler, but that doesn't detract from the album at all. How can you not like the lightning fast guitar and the "Who, who who, has won?! Who, who, who, has died?!" chorus in the title track? "Inner self" is the slowest song here, thats not saying much, it's still fast-ish, like a fast mid tempo I suppose, or a slow fast song, but it kicks. You know when you hear that chugging guitar riff, then the drums with these cool sounding drum rolls, and then double bass, that it's going to rock. Then when it speeds up just over halfway through the song, that part makes the song! Seriously, listen to the energy behind it. Speaking of that, the guitar tone on this album is great, it sounds like a real guitar, it's not super detuned, and it's raw and full of energy. Then we have "Stronger Than Hate" it's agressive, and it's got a super chorus with a whole bunch of guest vocalists, like Kelly Shaefer and John Tardy among others. Of course if your the average reader of my blog you probably have no idea who these people are. In fact, I applaud you for reading this far into my rambling reviews of metal albums that the average music fan has never heard of, of course that is if you do read this, seriously, I have no idea why I write these or if anyone reads them. But back to the review, theres a really awesome headbang inducing part at the end of "Stronger than Hate" which is suddenly interrupted by...clean guitar? I'm rocking out like an idiot the first time I heard this and then all of a sudden I get this crap. Whats up with that? Are they going soft? What is this? I'm just kidding, I like it. There's actually clean guitar sprinkled throughout this album. Like in "Mass Hypnosis" where the solo pretty much makes that song. Another thing about this, is that I can't understand half the words being sung. Maybe i'm exagerating a little bit, but it's just that his accent is so thick. It's not his singing or anything like that, it's just his accent is so heavy, it's obvious english isn't his first language. I mean in the chorus of "Mass hypnosis I thought he was singing something in spanish, then I looked up the lyrics and realized he was singing "Hate through the artieries" now it's clear to me but at the time it wasn't. The last real song on here though "Primitive future" is so energetic it isn't even funny. But I also have some bonus tracks that i'm not going to count towards the score because they aren't really part of the album anyway. Only 1 of the 3 bonus tracks is a song. That would be "A Hora e a Vez do Cabelo Nascer" Yeah, really. It's some brazillian hardcore punk song or something they convered, I can't really say much because i've never heard the origional, but on it's own merits, I can say that it's not a bad song. Bottom line is, this album is all I listned too for a while, go out and get it now, get the CD, download it off Itunes (I did), I don't care, just listen to this album. 10 out of 10.