When the fuck did Soulfly become a (semi) thrash band? It seems as though Max Cavalera’s collaboration with his little brother Igor has had a greater impact on his song writing than anyone could have predicted. Following the surprising debut of Cavalera Conspiracy, Max is back with sixth full length offering for his full-time band Soulfly entitled Conquer. Surprisingly enough, it’s actually decent.

I’m actually very familiar with the work of Soulfly as they are my girlfriend’s favorite band and for the first few years we lived together she’d play Primitive on a regular basis and I eventually grew to appreciate it. At first I resisted, trying to go limp and see if I could leave my body, that didn’t work. I tried numbing my mind with alcohol and narcotics, while that made me sleepy it didn’t change the fact I was listening to Soulfly. When she finally got fed up with my eye rolling she threatened to play some of her other favorite music… like The Beautiful South and Boney M. If you’ve ever heard that shit, you’ll quickly understand why I gave up fighting her over listening to Soulfly.

Once I gave in, I started to realize that Primitive really wasn’t that different from Sepultura’s Roots which just happened to be an album I really like. I don’t care what anyone says, Roots is fun, catchy as fuck and most importantly so bass heavy it makes your fillings rattle. I can understand why fans of the thrash-era Sepultura don’t like it, but how fans of bass heavy slamming brutal death metal hate it is beyond me, probably because they hate admitting that the Max-era Sepultura’s “worst” album is better than any stupid piece of shit their stupid brutal band has ever recorded, but I digress.

Conquer isn’t Roots. It isn’t Primitive, it’s not Cavalera Conspiracy and it’s not a Sepultura album. Conquer is a non-stop hour of high-paced thrash fused with enough chuggy groove metal riffs and tribal rhythms to keep the band’s longtime fans happy. There are a few surprising additions to the band’s sound, however, as there are Middle Eastern elements mixed in, plus the material is much more thrash oriented than their previous efforts.

Opening track "Blood Fire War Hate" is a high paced thrash track, similar to material found on Cavalera Conspiracy’s Inflikted disc, with guest vocals by Morbid Angel front man David Vincent, it’s a surprisingly powerful track.

This is followed up by a more straight forward nu-metal-styled track "Unleash" featuring Throwdown vocalist Dave Peters. It’s the weakest song on the album and not the best song I’ve ever heard, but at least it’s fucking heavy, which is something that cannot be said for recent offerings by Metallica, Megadeth, Opeth or Dragonforce.

The material returns to thrash on "Paranoia", which has a rhythm made for head banging and a chorus that’ll get a crowd of people chanting in unison.

"Warmageddon" is a slow brewing track that takes a full two minutes to build up into a thrash metal track that features a few riffs I haven’t heard from any Max Cavalera-fronted act since early 90s Sepultura.

"Enemy Ghost" is next with a slow-paced chuggernaut which has a few of those aforementioned Middle Eastern influences tossed in.

Rough speeds things up with some thrashingly good riffing, mixed in with some heavy chugging.

"Fall Of The Cycophants" is another track with 80s Sepultura thrash riffing and, while a bit repetitive, is still pretty decent.

"Doom" is another mix of thrash and the traditional Soulfly sound, with a high paced tempo, and choppy vocal patterns. This track contains some pretty solid leads, although it does break down into some odd laid back Middle Eastern rhythms around the midway point, though it’s not unpleasant, it’s actually pretty good.

"For Those About To Rot" is another track that doesn’t excite me that much, it’s a fairly repetitive track, although it does feature a number of nods to early Sepultura.

"Touching The Void" sees Soulfly turning to… *gasp* doom! The seven and a half track is a slow paced crawler with thick meaty riffs, slow drum beats and Max’s angry snarls. It’s also my favorite song on the album. By no means is Soulfly going to match bands like Coffins, Winter, Thergothon or Disembowelment, but I’ve heard a lot worse doom than this.

The album ends with "Soulfly VI", a melodic instrumental track. It’s not the most amazing instrumental I’ve ever heard, but it’s not painful to listen to either.

Soulfly aren’t going to convert haters into fans with this effort, it’s still Soulfly and there’s enough nu-metal influence to make the average fan of extreme metal fucking hate it, but it is still a lot better than recent offerings by the other “big name” metal acts. This album reminds me of Slayer’s Christ Illusion in that it is a step back towards thrash and the glory days of metal, and there are a number of tracks that are catchy, on the whole… with nearly an hour of music there’s at least a good 15 minutes of filler and another 10 minutes of stuff I just can’t really get into, but the remaining 35 or so minutes are pretty good.

With Cavalera Conspiracy’s Inflikted and now Soulfly’s Conquer there’s new hope that some day, maybe even some day in the not too distant future, Max Cavalera and friends will record something as high quality as Arise. He’s not there yet, but at least this is a step in the right direction and is infinitely better than the watered down bullshit Metallica and Megadeth are spewing out these days. If you liked Inflikted or you’re a closet fan of Soulfly, Conquer is definitely worth checking out. Personally, I like it, I don’t love it and it’s certainly not a classic, but I can easily listen to it beginning to end without getting the urge to throw my stereo across the room and out the window. Besides, it’s a hell of a lot better than listening to Boney M and The Beautiful South, dude, you have no idea how much that shit makes me want to rip my skin off.

Written By: Teufel