What would Jesus choose?

What follows is the first in a series of questions entitled “What would Jesus do?”. Only tangentially to do with religion, this series asks the hard question: “If you can only choose between A and B, which would you choose”. The first question:

Beneath the Remains or Arise?

As a young metal head it took me years to get around to listening to Sepultura’s Arise. It would be many more years later until I heard Beneath the Remains, and longer still until it “clicked” for me. My Sepulchral inroad was 1994’s Chaos AD. From the loose tribal drumming, propulsive riffing and a spit in the face of the first world defiant swagger, I was hooked. By contrast the seamless death/thrash blend of Arise appeared dated and regressive to a younger me. But after multiple listens, Arise started to gel and I began to appreciate the fine line it walked between two extreme musical genres. Arise’s strong points are its precision and focus, it is a tightly structured, well paced and balanced album, certainly worthy of the praise heaped upon it. So then comes my belated engagement with Beneath the Remains. Where Arise straddled genres, Remains inhabited the interstice between period aesthetics. Maintaining a heft dose of primitive early thrash yet pushing forward towards exacting sonic devastation, Remains functions as a kind of a portal into possible proto-alternative futures for thrash and death metal. Lyrically, Arise is the stronger of the two and likely reflects the length of time after the band’s shift to a North American context. However, while Arise might be stronger and more consistent lyrically, stylistically, Remains takes more risks, sounding like a band still trying to find its sound. This nascent version of the still young band simply doesn’t give a damn one way or the other about external stylistic conventions.

Judgement: I must admit, I have never been a fan of either/or binaries but when presented with one (even if the presenter and presentee are the same) I cannot shy away from participating whether to undermine the prevailing logic or to simply broadcast my terrible taste. As for the question at hand, while I have a lot of affection and a nostalgic soft spot for Arise, it is Beneath the Remains which helps improve this grandpa’s blood flow. Remains holds looseness and unpredictability against Arise’s exacting sounds and that spirit of experimentation is what wins me over to this day.

Sepultura – Kairos (Review).

Extraneous. A one word definition of what school was like for me as a youth. Working now as I do in a junior high school I see that it is a definition which still fits. That feeling of painful irrelevance coupled with know-it-all perspective endemic to the age bracket results in far too many under-achievers. Those who choose to just disengage, to wing it or just do the very least required for academic survival. I was one of those students who frequently received the non-accolade “Could do better with effort” on report cards. Occasionally, interest piqued I would turn in an (almost) excellent report or get an (almost) perfect score on a test. I made it through school and I am sure that many students like me will also survive this system. It is a shame though, that the system and why not just say it, society broadly, seems incapable of the best practices for realizing the innate excellence of our youth.

Post “Roots” Sepultura is like one of the above mentioned students. After the widely under appreciated “Against” (which yours truly thinks is actually a rather excellent album), from “Nation” to “A-Lex”, these once A-list-ers produced predominantly unremarkable albums which always had a few good songs and occasionally excellent ones. The problem has never been with sound, nor musical progression. In fact, the sum of post-Max Cavalera Sepultura parts – circular riffs, Derrick Green, powerful rhythmic elements, tribal drumming, guitar solo freak-outs and sinister psychedelia – is a rather listenable brew. The problem has been that the songs have been on the whole not particularly memorable.

Enter Kairos. I held no expectations for this new platter. I have gone through the motions each time, read the reviews, battled my inner self over whether or not to drop the cash on an LP version. After listening, I can only say that this is Kisser and co.’s finest album in fourteen years. It is evocative of past eras of the band and just when it feels as though they are about to settle into a rut, they make a left turn.

Out soon. Vinyl release scheduled, but being on a European label, be prepared to take it like a man (or just be tough or whatever) and suck up the VAT, postage and currency inflation. Currently priced at between $36-50 locally here in Japan, you would have to be hard core supporter to get this on wax (after all, the same loot could buy the new Black Dahlia Murder, Pestilence and Premonition 13 albums combined. Just sayin’). Is it worth it? Let your budget decide.