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Thrash Redefined? | ‘Arise’ by Sepultura - Full Album Review
52 Plays2 years ago
In this Classic Album Review, we take a look at Sepultura’s legendary 1991 album, ‘Arise’, which brought them success, fame and world renown - earning them coverage through the likes of NME and MTV.
Daria and Laz look into the fantastic blend of styles that they combined to give us this classic album!
You can also watch us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7mfJVCp_TzbPNZNMMemJuw
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Transcript
Introduction and Overview
00:00:08
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to Minds of Metal. My name is Daria. And I'm Laz. And together we're a husband and wife team, both professional musicians talking all things heavy metal. And today we're bringing you a classic album review of Arise by Sebel Tura. That's right, yeah. When we were talking about these different episodes we're going to do and the modern metal reviews, the classic album reviews, we kind of said to ourselves, well, hold on, where's the cutoff point?
What makes an album classic?
00:00:32
Speaker
Like, is there one year where now are we doing it by length of time, 10, 20, 30 years?
00:00:37
Speaker
But we thought, actually, we'd probably do an album by album. I mean, generally, we're not going to find an album that was released in 2020 that's going to be classic. But there are some albums in the 90s that could still sound fresh and modern. And there are some albums in the 90s like this one we're doing today that we believe is classic, purely because of what it did for future generations of heavy metal. So something that's really interesting here is that Sepultura, our Brazilian heavy metal band, the album Arise was released on the 25th of March, 1991.
Thrash Metal Elements
00:01:07
Speaker
Now, Sepultura in general are considered a thrash metal band, which is interesting because as we're going to talk about in this album, we see it as a little more than that. But something interesting about thrash metal is if you remember from our metalcore episode, we talked about extreme metal very loosely and very briefly, but we did talk about it. Now, extreme metal is thrash metal plus doom metal plus black metal plus death metal plus traditional metal all into one extreme form.
00:01:35
Speaker
Now, if you want to listen to a perfect thrash metal album, Rain in Blood by Slayer, you're going to put the album cover up there. Perfect thrash metal album. It's probably the defining thrash metal album of metal all the time. I don't think there's been a better album. I don't think there will be of saying what thrash metal is. What's thrash metal to you?
00:01:56
Speaker
fast messy in places i don't personally like the solos but that's just me i know you don't like them either it's just really sort of energetic aggressive aggressive yeah just always think about that snare yeah really fast pumping out aggression i'd say weird solos as we said shouting um fast paced and lots of energy i think this is a good place to now head into the album and talk about the thrash elements that we hear
00:02:28
Speaker
So the album starts with the ultimate
00:02:31
Speaker
a thrash metal song called Arise, the title track of the album. It just does what it says, doesn't it? It's just a thrash sound. Yeah, that's it. It's a fast-paced song. It brings a lot of energy and aggression to this album. Other thrash elements I heard is the song Dead Embryonic Cells. Pre-vocals, you've got a thrashy riff with some groovy drums. The second verse, though, is just out and out thrash.
00:02:58
Speaker
Also, a thrash solo, and there are many that I'll list in a minute, that sounds very much like a slayer solo. You fastly pick notes in a whammy bar, the bending strings that we already said we don't really get on with thrash metal solos. But there was also thrash solos in Desperate Cry and Murder. Subtraction had a really flashy intro. Meaningless movement we'll get to. What was the other one you said? Infected voice.
00:03:27
Speaker
And that's, I think that quite clearly establishes that there is a thrash metal bass going throughout this album. So earlier we mentioned that we had actually a blend of subgenres going on in this album.
Death and Groove Metal Influences
00:03:42
Speaker
And one of the other ones amongst thrash metal, we actually heard quite a bit of death metal going on. So stuff like, again, Dead in Breonic Cells, you told me that it is a death metal riff
00:03:55
Speaker
Why is that? So when I think of death metal, I think very heavily low screams. I think very straight drumming, fast drumming. You know, death metal is a branch off of the extreme metal tree, just the same way it flashes.
00:04:14
Speaker
I'm not saying that I hear something here that I compare to Cannibal Corpse, for example, one of the famous death metal bands, but what I do hear is complexity in the riffs. I hear palm muted guitars, I hear tremolo, sort of fast picking, and I hear an overall heaviness and rawness in the guitar riffs. I hope that makes sense. So is that what you define death metal as?
00:04:43
Speaker
Are these the characteristics that you hear? In terms of riffs, yes. I'd expect fast riffs, palm muted, low tuned guitars, very heavily distorted guitars. I already said low tuned, I think. But the comparison I make for this album is especially the complexity and the rhythms of the riff. So if you think in a fashion or you could have a riff that goes, but with death metal, I feel like
00:05:14
Speaker
I hear the rhythmic differences between nose and that's what we're today distinguishing between thrashing death metal especially in terms of the guitar riffage. You mentioned we had some dead embryonic cells. There was also Desperate Cry had loads of death metal riffs I thought especially there's one after the acoustic guitar reprise. Altered State was cool, we're going to talk about that one in a little bit.
00:05:38
Speaker
and meaningless movement I thought was fantastic because it just kind of seamlessly goes from thrash to death metal and to the next subgenre that we're going to talk about now. The next subgenre that we really want to talk about is groove metal and I mean when you listen to this album I personally I find it really bouncy. I do. Yeah and that's that that to me sums up the groove part.
00:06:08
Speaker
You've got to think, yeah, groove metal might be another one of those branches that comes from the extreme metal. I mean, I think if I'm sort of from my knowledge, I'd say groove metal kind of came more from the glam metal phase. Do you know what? It's probably a hybrid. It's probably the heaviness of extreme metal with the accessibility of glam metal and something like that. But the groove metal, as Dash said, it's about the balancing. It's about wanting to be there.
00:06:32
Speaker
And I think, you know, you've got bands like the most famous groove metal band, Pantera, also doing their stuff in the early 90s and just didn't surprise me that we heard it here. And I think one thing we owe this to is the drummer because what I've got here is a list of... I mentioned the death metal riffs earlier. Groove drums over death metal riffs. Groove death hybrid. And what I mean is that whilst you're hearing these
00:06:57
Speaker
Death metal, heavy, chomping guitar riffs like... You've got the drums grooving. Like, you know, there's moments in Thrash, I mean, take, like I said earlier, the Rain In Blood album. There's no part of Rain In Blood where, you know, you want to, if you want to move on to the music, you head back like that. There's no, oh yeah, Rain In Blood grooving along. It doesn't happen. Whereas here, the drums make it so accessible for you to just bounce your shoulders to.
00:07:31
Speaker
This is a kind of another unique thing that we're hearing, because we're told about the blend. You've got the thrash, you've got the death, and now you've got the groove, which they work it so well because you can have some sections that are so obviously thrash, some sections that are so obviously thrash drums and death metal guitars, and some sections which are just so obviously death or thrash guitars with a groove drum beat over it, because it's sort of bouncy. Yeah, that last minute of dead embryonic cells,
00:07:48
Speaker
You know, I think it's fantastic.
00:08:01
Speaker
Groovy as hell. Groove of the aloe. It's just so great. If we talk about groove a little bit, so something about a characteristic of groove metal is that because of the dancing effect, because of the bouncing effect, a lot of metal, if you play it straight, you emphasise beats one and three. And that's because that's when you want to emphasise an accent, the heavy parts. You go... You know, emphasise one and three. With groove metal, however,
00:08:30
Speaker
The perfect song to check out for this is Cowboys From Hell by Pantera because the emphasis isn't on the one and three anymore, it's on the two and four. So it's... That's where it grooves, that's where you get the bounce from. And that is where you hear it a lot in this album. And sometimes they kind of change within a section going from a groove drum to a thrash drum. And actually it's fantastic because you get this blend and this perfect marriage of all of these sub-genres. But ultimately,
00:09:01
Speaker
I don't know if we've said it's a thrash metal album at its base. Overall, I don't know how to categorize it because it just has this perfect blend between these three spines. Well, yeah, like you said, it's I've got some like meaningless movements. We just got that death metal riff with groove metal drums. Yeah. And for that one, sorry, I've got seamless transition between death, thrash and groove. They just go from one to the other. Yeah. And back again.
00:09:28
Speaker
And then you've got songs like Infected Voice, which is just thrash throughout. So yeah, I guess it's just maybe they were experimenting. I like to think that. And the reason that I mentioned Rain in Blood and Death Metal at the start of this video was because this album is five years after Rain in Blood. So you have Slayer who have cemented
00:09:51
Speaker
into the world of heavy metal. What a perfect thrash metal album sounds like. Now, at the end of the 80s, that's when death metal started to gain popularity. And what was it on groove metal? So bands like Pantera were still popping up, you know. So I like that this album, Rise, is a product of its time. It took the elements of thrash it loved, it took the elements of death it loved, it grooved it up, which we're actually going to talk about more in the next section, to create this fantastic hybrid.
Cultural and Heritage Influences
00:10:22
Speaker
So as we said, the part we're going to talk about now is asking the question, why does it groove? And my answer to this is because of the hugely Brazilian influence. Now Sepultura are a Brazilian heavy metal band and throughout the album
00:10:39
Speaker
It actually becomes more apparent on some of their later work, especially Chaos AD and the album Roots, which, you know, the roots of their heritage is Brazil. But in this album Arise, you've got hugely Brazilian drum influence, subtraction, the music behind the instrumental section is very primal, it's very percussive, it's about rhythm.
00:11:03
Speaker
Yeah, and there's offbeat cymbals and that one which I really loved and I thought that's just a great sort of injection of the authenticity. Yeah and in altered state you've got the Brazilian rhythms and instruments at the start of the song and then as the song fades out you've got those drums doing the Brazilian rhythms again. What do you, how do you feel about that? You know hearing those Brazilian instruments maybe for the first time in metal
00:11:28
Speaker
being injected into another song. Oh, I really love that. I love when people actually inject anything into metal. I think it's really innovative and it's interesting and it just shows what they are about. And you know what very significant to me is, I think we watched like one of the live sessions in the studio or something and they were playing like all these Brazilian percussion instruments.
00:11:51
Speaker
And I was like, what is that instrument? I've never seen this instrument in my life and it's just making this kind of rain sounds or whatever. I was like, that just sounds great. And you would never think that that would be on a thrash album, you know, let alone anything else. So, yeah, I feel great about that. Now, the big question is, how do you think the use of Brazilian rhythms
00:12:18
Speaker
influenced potentially the music to come. So I think the injection of this Brazilian indigenous sound that they brought, I think that's said to people that although metal has been evolving, you know, we went from traditional to new wave, to glam, to thrash, to death, ultimately it all kind of falls under the same bracket. If you go to the heaviest point of metal, you get death. If you go to the lightest point, you get glam.
00:12:48
Speaker
Ultimately, it's still guitars, bass, drums and vocals, whether it's screaming or singing, you're still in this sort of bracket. I love that injecting this Brazilian stuff was almost completely fresh. And what for me that, if you look at where metal went after this, in the mid 90s, you had new metal coming about. And the most important point about new metal was it was metal plus something unusual, rap, hip hop, funk,
00:13:18
Speaker
That's it really, you know, punk and all of those sort of, I'm trying to think of it as well. Yeah, you've got corn, Slipknot with their rap, Limp Bizkit with the rap, Rage Against the Machine with the funk and the rap as well. And that's, to me, what was so important about new metal is that you injected something unusual. You think about System of a Dam, and their Armenian heritage and influence. You've got that song, Forest, which has that traditional Armenian rhythm. It's not a typical heavy metal rhythm. And I think albums like Arise,
00:13:48
Speaker
where they so obviously, I was going to say paid tribute to Brazil, but it's not. Brazil is in the album. It's not like, ah, this is a little 10 seconds of tribute to Brazil. No, for me, the foundations of the album, even if it is a thrash metal song, or thrash metal drumming, or if it's one of the groovia, I still think Ivo Cavalera, his heart is always in what he probably grew up with, and that is with the Brazilian influenced rhythms.
00:14:16
Speaker
And so now we've covered the fresh metal, the death metal, the groove metal, and the Brazilian influence on the album. There's one more part that you wanted to talk about, isn't there?
00:14:26
Speaker
about Metallica in the album, okay?
Sepultura's Influence and Legacy
00:14:30
Speaker
So basically, I was listening to it just on the sofa, and as soon as Desperate Cry came in, I paused it and I was like, oh my goodness, this is Battery by Metallica. Yeah, the intro. Yeah, the intro is so, so similar, and you can definitely hear the influence there as well. And that's not the only song. I also thought Altered State was a little, like, shorter straw.
00:14:54
Speaker
You know, and well Metallica was already really big at that point, so I wouldn't be surprised if they took some inspiration there also. It's interesting because you said Shortest Straw, which is from the album And Justice for All. Quickly, it's one of, it's probably my favourite metal album of all time, so I'll try and keep it quick. That's another fantastic album where you can look at the marriage between Thrash and Death Metal.
00:15:17
Speaker
and that you're going to get exactly what I'm talking about, about those death metal riffs with a song like Shorty Straw. So just a little note, go and check that album out. But other than that, I completely agree with you. There's the section in, it's actually Desperate Cry as well, where there's the lighter instrumental section with the dual lead guitars.
00:15:32
Speaker
I'm going through that really reminded me like it was from Ride the Lightning or Master of Puppets or something. And you've got to think, you know, who was influencing Sepultura? We know they loved their Brazilian rhythmic indigenous music, but on the mental side of things, who was influencing Sepultura? And I think the answer is there.
00:15:52
Speaker
Overall, I've really enjoyed this album. It's personally for me, I would have loved it a bit more for writing the vocals because, you know, we have this rawness, shouty sort of vocal, but it is their sound, isn't it? And that's what Sepulchre sounds like. I also just want to say that timing on this album is immaculate and I think that the way it's played is very, very well done.
00:16:15
Speaker
Yeah, the performance and the execution of it is fantastic. Even the production. I love how raw it is. It's not overdone. It's not over polished. I know that when they recorded this album, they rehearsed for ages trying to get everything right. And you can hear that they got everything right.
00:16:28
Speaker
And what's more than them actually getting everything right is that the critics thought they got it right as well, because this is Sepultura's most famous and critically acclaimed album. It sold over a million copies in two years, which is a huge, huge feat for a band, a relatively unknown band from Brazil like them. And this would gain them a lot of popularity in the media. After this album came out, they were sort of featured on NME and MTV, and then this is when their legacy
00:17:00
Speaker
Thank you so much for being with us here today. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please don't forget to like this video and subscribe to our channel for more videos. And don't forget that if you're too busy and you don't have time to watch YouTube and just sit and watch it on the screen or something, we have a dedicated podcast for you, which is these episodes with the audio extracted available for you during your commute or any other time where you don't have time to watch, but you can listen. So have a metal day. Have a lovely day. We'll see you very soon.