Review by Shadowdoom9 (Andi) for Soulfly - Dark Ages (2005)

The heavier classic metalheads know who Max Cavalera is. He was one of the founders of Brazilian metal legends Sepultura alongside his brother Igor. During Max's time with the band, they made a blackened death metal album, a classic deathly thrash metal trilogy, and two mainstream groove metal albums. Believe it or not, this is my first time I've given some listening and a review to a full album from Max Cavalera's later band Soulfly. With all this yelling I've heard of about "jumpin' da f*** up" and armageddon, I thought I would have a turn to dive in. And this experience left me...quite disappointed. The potential for unique groove aggression I was expecting doesn't happen.

I just wanna say that there's a little more to hate than the other couple groove metal bands in this part of the Pit test; the riff-fest of Machine Head and the hardcore-ish power of Anthrax's Sounds of White Noise. At the same time, there's still a bit of interesting music experimentation, including some thrash. You can hear it a bit of riff aggression and soloing. So there's nothing overly bland about the Dark Ages album as a whole, but still not all of the songs are worth mentioning.

Focusing on only a few songs, The first full track "Babylon" is already a waste of time. However, decent thrashy riffing appears in "I and I". In the middle, there's a beautiful soft bridge as a break from the riffing. All those aspects in that song make it the best here. Some confusion can be caused by the bad-a** rawness of "Carved Inside" with kick-A riffing that then leads to vocals so weird that you feel the urge to rip out his Max's vocal cords. Actually, it's lead guitarist Marc Rizzo that's causing the f***ing issue here with his horrible attempt at soloing. The band was really trying their best there, but ultimately it all just turns into out-of-tune bullsh*t, making the experience age poorly.

"Innerspirit" is also nicely decent. "Bleak" is ironically not as bleakly dull as most of the other tracks. It starts heavy then gets more experimental in the climax. It's nowhere as shallow as the lower points of the album.

So all we have is a few good songs, but everything else is mostly just simply obnoxious. Awesome riffing in those 3 songs, then the direction goes unfocused. And guess what, the lyrics are often worse than the ones in Machine Head's debut, and combined with the weak music, they make a lot of this album's material a laughingstock. I say the atrocity covers most tracks, while the more tolerable ones keep the album at its current rating score. I'm not sure I would be up for this Sepultura spin-off band again...

Favorites (only ones I like here): "I and I", "Innerspirit", "Bleak"