Sepultura – 'Sepulquarta' Album Review

Tracklist:

1. Territory (feat. David Ellefson)

2. Cut Throat (feat. Scott Ian)

3. Sepulnation (feat. Danko Jones)

4. Inner Self (feat. Phil Rind)

5. Hatred Aside (feat. F. Lira, A. Burns, M. Puertas)

6. Mask (feat. Devin Townsend)

7. Fear, Pain, Chaos, Suffering (feat. Emmily Barreto)

8. Vandals Nest (feat. Alex Skolnick)

9. 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. Fred Leclercq & Marcello Pompeu)

14. Kaiowas (feat. Rafael Bittencourt)

15. Orgasmatron (feat. Phil Campbell)

When I first got this album to review, I started listening to each track and started to write about the positive things for each song and at times it was really, really hard. By the time I was nearing the end of this album I decided to scrap it all as just like the album it clearly wasn’t working.

I’m gonna be brutal here, I found this album at times to be like pulling teeth (not very enjoyable) and boy did it drag. This album is very frustrating because at times I finally found something decent was starting to happen only to be let down by the following track. The biggest problem with this album is rarely does it add anything new to previously recorded songs and the vocals are buried so low in the mix that you can barely hear them.

It’s easy to lump these songs into groups so for the first batch - we have songs that feature bassists and add absolutely nothing to the song (you’d have to watch the video to know they played on it).

Second Batch – Songs that sound heavier due their being a second guitarist (some of these songs sound pretty damn good) but they do frustrate as it highlights how light things sound when Andreas drops out for a solo.

Third batch – Songs with guest vocalists who trade vocal lines. Sometimes it works other times it just seems like everyone is going through the motions.

For the Fourth and final batch – Songs that stand out due to them being a bit different. Sadly this batch this batch is really lacking and for me there were only really two songs on this album that made me think “that’s pretty good I like what they did there” in case you may be interested these were “Ratamahatta” & “Jasco/Kaiowas”.

I really did feel like this album dragged, there are songs on Sepultura’s you tube channel from these sessions that probably would have been a far better choice on this album “Desperate Cry & Meaningless Movements” for example than some of the songs played here. I know that bands have been stripped of their income over the pandemic and have had to resort to other means to make money, but this album feels like a label cash grab due to having all the guests on it.

As much as I love Sepultura I’m going to file this album under forget I ever heard it. This album really deserves a 1.5 star rating but I’ll bump it to 2 stars due to the fact that at 'Ratamahatta' and 'Kaiowas' offer something a little bit different to their studio versions.