Sepultura!! They’re still one of my favorite metal bands of all time, even with both incarnations of the band—from the original Max Cavalera era to now with Derrick Green. Of course Max went to form Soulfly (along with several other offshoot bands) and they’ve all been good, but none as great as Sepultura. When I think of the classic big thrash metal bands, they are right there along with Slayer, Testament, and Metallica.
What’s made them unique is the diversity of material and sounds they’ve done. They started doing more Speed/Thrash/Death Metal music, but as they grown, they blended soulful tribal rhythms, native Brazilian instruments, and helped establish the Nu Metal sound with that heavy, down-tuned groove.
I think Chaos A.D. is a top 10 metal album. Yes, it was a departure from the Thrash/Death metal style they’d done before, but they did everything on this album and it still stands up. It’s crafted metal songwriting with influences. When I think of this band, many tracks come to mind including Inner Self, Desperate Cry, Arise, and Roots Bloody Roots, but for this Metal Motivation Monday, Refuse/Resist is the track that made the list. It’s an anthem to standing strong and holding on to your beliefs. With whatever battle you have going on around you, stand strong. Refuse! Resist!
Check out the videos below. The live video even has Björk and Dave Grohl talking about how much they liked this band even back then.
Via Wikipedia:
Out of the boredom of playing the Arise songs for two years straight and the threat of musically stagnating, Sepultura pushed the envelope on Chaos A.D. The first track, “Refuse/Resist”, revealed the band’s new musical direction: slower, with more emphasis on groove than speed. The song starts with the heartbeat of Max’s then-unborn first son, Zyon, followed by some Afro-Brazilian drumming reminiscent of Salvador, Bahia samba-reggae group Olodum. About the track’s introductory guitar riff, Max acknowledged that it “could have been created by a death metal band.”Chaos A.D. was their first record to utilize some lower guitar tunings. Half of the songs in the album are tuned down to D Standard except for “Kaiowas” which is in (Drop C# Tuning).
Diversity was the key to Chaos A.D., revealed Max Cavalera. “Biotech Is Godzilla” was “pure hardcore”, according to the elder Cavalera. “Nomad”, with its characteristically slow riffs, was described by lead guitarist Andreas Kisser as their answer to Metallica’s “Sad but True”. The album also featured Sepultura’s first all-acoustic incursion, “Kaiowas”. In the book The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists, author Joel McIver stated the album showed a “movement away from extreme metal to a more punk sound” with a stronger focus on “feel and groove”. McIver went on to state that the album showed the first signs of the groove metal genre that Sepultura would apply by the mid-1990s. In Ian Christe’s book Sound of the Beast, he credits Chaos A.D, along with American heavy metal band Pantera for developing the death metal-influenced music of groove metal that would later influence other artists in the 90s.
Chaos A.D.
Tanks on the streets
Confronting police
Bleeding the Plebs
Raging crowd
Burning cars
Bloodshed starts
Who’ll be alive?!
Chaos A.D.
Army in siege
Total alarm
I’m sick of this
Inside the state
War is created
No man’s land
What is this shit?!
Refuse/Resist
Refuse
Chaos A.D.
Disorder unleashed
Starting to burn
Starting to lynch
Silence means death
Stand on your feet
Inner fear
Your worst enemy
Refuse/Resist
Refuse/Resist
