Cavalera Conspiracy - Pandemonium
I'm going to be very blunt, here: Cavalera Conspiracy's last record was a trainwreck. It boasted some good ideas and a tiny smattering of decent tracks amidst a whirlwind of mediocrity and inconsistency that left a really foul taste in my mouth after the band's colossal debut, so I'd pretty much written the band off as a one-trick pony. Soulfly's 'Savages' was an improvement, but it was so horrbily dull that I couldn't actually bring myself to write the review for it - then, when Max stated publicly that the new Cavalera Conspiracy record was going to be a grindcore album, I gave up. Whenever a well-known artist specifically states that they're making an album that sounds like x or y, it never sounds that way. Such is the case with 'Pandemonium', yet in spite of failing to live up to the promise of a grind classic, it's actually a really, really good album in its own right.
There isn't a great deal to say about the songwriting here, it's trademark Max riffing with some super brutal delivery and a LOT of old school thrash/hardcore worship; it's easy to see why the aforementioned grind comparisons were made. Shitloads of dirty bass and an average song length of about three and a half minutes (all at a satisfactorily pace of 'fast as fuck') really ties together for a brutal experience that's probably Max's heaviest album since Beneath the Remains, and there's very little in the way of 'groove' to be found. In fact, the album was originally going to be called 'Fuck That Groove' as reference to this, though this brings up the issue that the record does tend to lose itself amidst its own chaos here and there; the vocals in particular are just too fucking quiet! The guitars are rather high in the mix, and the vocals are so drowned in reverb that they're virtually nonexistent in places, which actually does more to detract from the atmosphere than adding to it.
Short and sweet, just like the album itself. If you like balls-out heaviness, Pandemonium is going to be right up your alley since it never lets up on its own insanity, but a few minor tweaks to the production and some more variety would have elevated this to a stone-cold classic. All the same, it's infinitely better than Blunt Force Trauma and ALMOST stands toe-to-toe with Inflikted in terms of its overall quality, which is more than could be said for a lot of Max's recent works. Pandemonium may be flawed, but it's a violent ride from beginning to end, and you can't ask for better entertainment than that.
There isn't a great deal to say about the songwriting here, it's trademark Max riffing with some super brutal delivery and a LOT of old school thrash/hardcore worship; it's easy to see why the aforementioned grind comparisons were made. Shitloads of dirty bass and an average song length of about three and a half minutes (all at a satisfactorily pace of 'fast as fuck') really ties together for a brutal experience that's probably Max's heaviest album since Beneath the Remains, and there's very little in the way of 'groove' to be found. In fact, the album was originally going to be called 'Fuck That Groove' as reference to this, though this brings up the issue that the record does tend to lose itself amidst its own chaos here and there; the vocals in particular are just too fucking quiet! The guitars are rather high in the mix, and the vocals are so drowned in reverb that they're virtually nonexistent in places, which actually does more to detract from the atmosphere than adding to it.
Short and sweet, just like the album itself. If you like balls-out heaviness, Pandemonium is going to be right up your alley since it never lets up on its own insanity, but a few minor tweaks to the production and some more variety would have elevated this to a stone-cold classic. All the same, it's infinitely better than Blunt Force Trauma and ALMOST stands toe-to-toe with Inflikted in terms of its overall quality, which is more than could be said for a lot of Max's recent works. Pandemonium may be flawed, but it's a violent ride from beginning to end, and you can't ask for better entertainment than that.
Label: http://www.napalmrecords.com
Reviewer: Dave Ingram Jr.
Jun 11, 2015
Jun 11, 2015
Next review:
Aasgard - Obscurantist Purification
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