Does Sepultura need an introduction? The beast from Brazil exerted tremendous stylistic pressure on late '80s thrash metal acts, pushing them to become more extreme, while inextricably altering the course of death metal, hardcore punk, and American black metal. So does anyone really need a recap on their legacy? Survey says, no.
Quadra is Sepultura's newest LP, fifteenth studio album overall, and if frontman Derrick Green is to be believed, the crown jewel of the group's post- Cavalera era. He’s not wrong, at least according to these ears, and these ears like what they hear a whole hell of a lot. First off, the album sounds gorgeous! A lot of metal albums (even great ones!) have atrocious mixing and mastering. Recording quality varies from track to track and the compression from one song can be flat out jarring. Not the case here! Every track feels full, fierce, and fertile with dynamic range. They really knew where to throw their money on this one, and it god damn shows!
Quadra is organized as a kind of quadriptych, examining in three song segments the concepts of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy, and how they connect, divide, and structure people's lives. "Means to an End" declares war on your senses from the outset with vicious thrash grooves and gravity-defying solos. "Guardians of Earth" begins with an acoustic Spanish inflected guitar and transitions into chorus singing, before evolving into an epic of tech-death euphoria. "Autem" is ruthless hardcore punk of the lowest meanest order, "Agony of Defeat" is surprisingly, and contrastingly, spacey and progressive, while the closer is top-shelf, primo groove metal, featuring guest vocals from fellow Brazilian Emmily Barreto of playful dance-punkers, Far From Alaska. It’s a whirlwind of ambition that lives up to the hype and full-on blenderizes the expectations most listeners will bring with them from previous releases of the ‘00s and ‘10s. While Quadra doesn’t achieve the heights of Chaos AD and other classics, it shows that the band is still capable of putting out a momentous album and that they are still far from ready to slip into the earthen recesses of their namesake, thirty-some-odd years into their careers.
Grab a copy of this mfer from Nuclear Blast before the radiation turns them all into vinyl soup! Or they sell out. Both are bad news for you.
