Cavalera Conspiracy - Pandemonium

Photo by: Tom Barnes / www.tombarnesphoto.com

If you look up Death/Thrash Metal up in the dictionary, the Cavalera brothers should be in the top results. Max and Iggor Cavalera have been crushing it since the early 90s, and they are not showing ANY signs of stopping. Their latest record, Pandemonium, is a delicious morsel of everything you would expect, with a big heaping side of MORE. This record is varied, stylish, coarse, visceral, dirty, and absofuckinglutely what you want to hear. Max’s vocals tear you up while Iggor’s drumming pummel your senses into oblivion, and yet you sit there craving MORE!

Let’s dig in!

Bombastic and otherworldly , “Babylonian Pandemonium” creeps into your brain and takes a strong foothold, spreading across the various cortexes until it explodes into an ominous ebb and flow that only Cavaleras can deliver.

“Bonzai Kamikazee” , is a fierce and menacing aural onslaught, with ascorbic vocals that pierce through the sonar plane, allowing for the guitar and kit to unfold into a progressive motif that meanders back and forth between mosh and groove.

“Scum” is a wall of sound that pushes forward into your space, your face, and everything in between.

Thrashy, wild and carnal, “I, Barbarian” atavistically spreads through every thread of human fiber in your being, and shreds them back to a more primitive and savage epoch.

“Cramunhao”’s dizzying guitar slices across a bed of plunging drums and primordial, yet anthemic, screams. That guitar scream is definitely coming from the devil that is being hatched within this song!

“Apex Predator” is industrial through a Cavalera lens, and it’s something good! This song forces you to take notice, and you DO! Fluctuating tempos, alternating shouts, guitars, and a rapid fire explosion from the kit make you a willing victim to the Apex Predator summoned by this song.

“Insurrection”, fast and powerful, this song is delivered like a swift punch to the face. It carries forth a true sense of rebellion, as the lyrics employ a crowd to push the significance forward. The song takes a 90 degree turn, going into a full instrumental path down into urgent and forceful

Creepy tintinnabulation opens “Not Losing the Edge” into a macabre filled twisted and distorted harmonic minor sounds accentuate shouts and growls that are only made possible by Max himself. If I had to finger a favorite, this one would be it!

Experimenting again with textures , “Father of Hate” inhabits your cranium and detonates into a mixture of aggression and bellicosity that spreads through your being like a virulent pandemic.

Sludgy “The Crucible” is like metal molasses flowing through your ears.

“Deus Ex Machina” is as powerful as the God Machine it hails and pays homage to. Thrash at its best, meandering and tinkering with tempos, the guitar riffs are electronically organic, with insectlike droning, this song is a penetrating vector into your soul.

“Porra” melds in a a Brazilian flair, juicy and tribal, experimenting with non-typical metal intros. We are enveloped by a rapturous beat and guitar that explodes into a thrash that rivals all others. Back and forth between the savory (dare I label) capoeira and thrash, this song is a song that makes you literally scream out “Porra”.

Pandemonium is exactly that: a raucous and unrestrained Pandemonium that experiments and twists the traditional thrash elements into shapes that it has never seen before. It has everything you are looking for in thrash, everything you want in metal. The Cavaleras have taken it to another level. Definitely a big 4.5 skulls from this reviewer!

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