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Cavalera Conspiracy - Blunt Force Trauma

Published March 16 2011


*
=Staff's pick

Warlord*
Torture
Lynch Mob*
Killing Inside
Thrasher
I Speak Hate
Target
Genghis Khan
Burn Waco*
Rasputin
Blunt Force Trauma*


Genre Metal
Max Cavalera
Vocals
Tracks 11
Max Cavalera
Guitar
Runningtime 34 Min.
Marc Rizzo
Guitar
Label Roadrunner Records
Johnny Chow
Bass
Release 29 March 2011
Igor Cavalera
Drums
Country Brazil
-
Keyboard
Producer Max Cavalera/Logan Mader    
Similar artists ---

I was pretty excited to hear that Max and Igor Cavalera were reuniting in 2008. Although Inflikted, their debut album as Cavalera Conspiracy, perhaps wasn't their best joint effort and left me a little underwhelmed, it was an okay album with a phenomenal title track.

Like its predecessor, Blunt Force Trauma starts off strong. The opening track Warlord is a typical punch-in-the-face metal song with some great riffing and Max is sounding as brutal as ever. The following song, Torture, is a short burst of energy - not even two minutes. It may not be the most creative song of all time but I find it somewhat refreshing; many bands often do the complete opposite and fill their albums with unnecessarily long songs, which might be one of the most boring phenomena in metal today.

Lynch Mob, the third song of the album, features Agnostic Front vocalist Roger Miret whose characteristic vocal style really lifts the song. It's actually one of my favourite songs on the album - I can't really explain why but they just nailed the small details with this one. Unfortunately the album loses a lot of momentum afterwards. Killing Inside, the first song to be released as a single from this album, has a pretty cool part after the guitar solo but other than that it, along with the following three or four songs, feel a lot like filler songs.

Things get better by the end of the album, luckily. Burn Waco has some cool grindcore-influenced parts and a great guitar solo wrapping the entire song up. I'm sort of confused with the song title - is the song about burning a Texan city, and in that case, why? I don't know, but it's a great song anyway. Rasputin is another okay song, but doesn't really do much for me. The last song, moreover the title track of the album, Blunt Force Trauma is one of the strongest songs on the album and with the fading guitar harmonies at the end, I feel pretty good about the album.

I like the different influences in the music - thrash metal, grindcore, hardcore punk, heavy metal etcetera - but I still get somewhat bored by some of the songs. I do however like that the record is just a little more than half an hour long - it fits this kind of music perfectly and makes some mistakes forgivable. Overall, Blunt Force Trauma is a good follow-up album and it makes for some pretty sick live performances this summer!

See also review of: Pandemonium , Inflikted

Performance
Originality
Production
Vocals
Songwriting

7

5

5,5

7

5,5

 
Summary



6 chalices of 10 - Bjorn


Related links:

www.cavaleraconspiracy.com
www.myspace.com/cavaleraconspiracy