Tag: Sepultura

Picking Five Songs From 1993

On By bigbadburchIn Songs By Year6 Comments

So now I’m spamming out these “songs by year” posts twice a week. I was supposed to post this yesterday, but oh well. This will help me get through this series by or near the end of the year, it’ll probably bleed a hair bit into 2026 but it will accomplish my goal just the same.

We are now to 1993. For me I was in the middle of high school and now more used to the massively changed music landscape since 1991 blew everything up. Alt rock was the new normal and heavy metal was going in several directions, some weird and some that would shape the genre for decades to come. I was in the thick of it and I was in an odd place where I was both enjoying the stuff I’d see on MTV and also exploring heavy metal’s underground, mostly shaped by this point at what we now call the old school death metal scene.

Essentially the music of the 1990’s was an adverse reaction to the music of the ’80’s and I was more so along for the ride on the side of the 1990’s. As I got older I would come to re-embrace the ’80’s music of my childhood, but at this point I was a 1990’s teenager. Like many dumb teenagers at the time, I felt like Mike Judge was spying on me and my friends when he came up with the concept for Beavis and Butthead. In reality he came up with it a few years before this but let’s not let the truth get in the way of my awesome narrative.

Anyway, enough of long-winded horseshit, as much as I engage in it on a weekly basis on this site. Let’s get into five of the songs I love from 1993.

Dwight Yoakam – A Thousand Miles From Nowhere

I have to keep this short so I won’t get huge into it, but most of my appreciation for 1990’s country came many, many years later as I let go of old biases and learned to appreciate the medium. The particulars of this would take too long to discuss, but one song I did really love at the time was this cryfest of a breakup song from Dwight. This cut from his mega hit album This Time hit with me the first time I ran into it. I can’t remember for sure because this was all over 30 years ago, but I kind of think MTV even played this a bit, but whatever the case I was exposed to it and became a fan of Dwight’s through this song. Fantastic stuff.

Tool – Sober

Now for what I was more into at the time, the concept of alt-metal showed up in full force by 1993. This was the introduction to Tool for most of us and it was a whale of a hit. This has crushing riffs and a hypnotic beat as the lyrics weave a tale of someone caught in addiction and not getting out. The video was also a massive talking point, with claymation figures made by guitarist Adam Jones and an eerie stop motion approach to the flick. People can say whatever they want about Tool and they often do, but this was a total mindfuck back in the day.

Cracker – Low

This was the year Cracker came around with what became their big hit. This song was all over MTV and other airwaves and has endured years later. This song is interesting because it fits the “woeful dirge” style but also has a massive amount of swagger to it, it is far more powerful than its mournful tone would imply. I also don’t know what in the hell they’re talking about in the lyrics, things were very obtuse in music around this time but the song rocks so that’s all I really need.

Carcass – Heartwork

This year Carcass chose to continue their evolution away from their grindcore past and fully embrace the strains of melodic death metal. It was great timing, as that scene was emerging out of Gothenburg, Sweden at the same time. Carcass put their own English stamp on the scene and delivered a clinical, precise and still brutal set. The title track of this album sees a tortured artist and, well, a tortured art piece, as the artist tries to assemble his masterpiece from the dismembered remains of his muse. This song had a bit of an extra kick in the ass along with it.

Sepultura – Refuse/Resist

The Brazilian masters of heavy released their seminal Chaos A.D. In 1993. The opening track is a brutal and noisy offering that showcases political and social unrest alongside a more groovy and tribal-oriented musical style in contrast to Sepultura’s thrash and death metal past. It remains as one of the band’s standout tracks to this day.

That wraps up 1993. Next week we’ll continue to plumb the depths of the mid-1990’s and cover when I exited school and entered the “real” world.

Picking Five Songs From 1991

On By bigbadburchIn Songs By Year3 Comments

This was supposed to be last Friday’s post. Go figure that a holiday and an extra day off would cause me to miss a post. But I digress.

Here we are. This is my weekly series where I pick five of my favorite songs from a given year. This time around, that given year is 1991.

It’s safe to say that 1991 is the most important music year of my life. I have all the love in the world for 1984, as I put on display a lot of last year. But nothing was as earth shattering and life altering as everything that happened in 1991.

It wasn’t just everything that happened in music, either – I turned 14 and started my freshman year of high school in 1991. In fact, my birthday was about a week after Metallica released their megalithic self-titled album. Everything was changing fast and I honestly wasn’t even on top of it all – both in life and in music. It would all come together eventually (in music, not in life…)

But today’s exercise is pretty simple – I will select five of my favorite songs from the year. Five is barely a drop in the bucket in terms of the music of 1991, but I’m going to keep this series on the rails and just handle it like any other year. If/when this site gets to 2031 I will dedicate the bulk of that year’s posts to reminiscing about 1991, and probably in a big blowout way that dwarfs even what I did for 1984. Something to look forward to in 5.5 years, I guess.

Sepultura – Dead Embryonic Cells

We kick off with this slice of obliteration from the album Arise, often regarded as the Brazilians’ magnum opus. It is equal parts thrash precision and a savage beating, with Sepultura crafting a sound that would serve as a bridge into extreme metal. The song is about being born in a world that is essentially dead and the brutality of the music captures the sentiment perfectly.

Skid Row – Wasted Time

The closing track from the seminal Slave To The Grind album is a ballad by which the bulk of other ballads can be judged. This haunting tale captures someone in the throes of drug addiction, the song was written about former Guns N’ Roses drummer Steven Adler. Sebastian Bach’s vocals soar here and everything comes together for a song that is simply beautiful.

Ozzy Osbourne – No More Tears

The tides of music were shifting in grand fashion in 1991, but the Prince of Darkness could still be counted on to deliver a worthy tune. Ozzy had a bit of a renaissance year in ’91 with the No More Tears album being a huge hit and this title track becoming one of his several signature tracks. This song is the twisted tale of a serial killer, but not told in open terms. Still it’s ominous and creepy.

Mötley Crüe – Primal Scream

Hair metal was being cast out by the second half of 1991, but no one gave Crüe the memo. They put out a greatest hits set with a handful of new songs on it, and this new track was electric. This was heavy, gritty and pounding, seeing the band move up a weight class in the heavy department. It foretold a massive new decade for Crüe, which did not pan out at all, but this kick ass song was a welcome drop in the minefield of ’91.

Carcass – Corporal Jigsore Quandary

By ’91 Carcass were on their third album and had shifted their sound from grindcore to death metal. This prime cut saw the band incorporate a bit of technicality into a very smooth death metal vehicle. And while the title and lyrics are overly wrought, as usual for earlier Carcass, the song is essentially about someone putting a human body back together. It is likely that the person doing the re-assembly is the same person responsible for the body’s dismembered state.

And that does it for five songs from the crazy year of 1991. I had originally thought picking a further five songs as I did for 1984, but in the end I decided against it as I want my focus to be on pushing on with the series.

Next week – I was originally going to restart album posts, but last week’s historic gigs have given us a handful of songs to go over so I will spend a few posts looking at stuff from both the final Ozzy show and the Oasis reunion instead. And I’ll press on with this, jumping in to 1992 where rock and metal were off to the races in many different directions.

Sepultura – Arise

On By bigbadburchIn Album of the Week5 Comments

This week I’ll leave 1984 alone and explore other waters. We can politely ignore the fact that I’m going to the other massive year in my musical fandom, the apocalyptic soundscape of 1991. And few soundscapes were more world-ending than that of Brazil’s metal madmen and their extreme thrash masterpiece.

Sepultura – Arise

Released March 25, 1991 via Roadrunner Records

My Favorite Tracks – Dead Embryonic Cells, Arise, Infected Voice

By 1991, Sepultura were through a few demos and two full-length efforts, and their profile was on the rise all through the world. As heavy metal was moving into more extreme directions, Sepultura were in prime position for their “thrash plus” metal to have an even bigger impact, which it certainly would.

Arise was recorded at Morrisound Studios in Tampa, Florida during 1990 and ’91. It was produced by the band as well as Morrisound mastermind Scott Burns, who had a massive impact on the early 1990’s metal scene. Burns cranked out a host of extreme metal’s finest albums out of the Morrisound hotbed, and this one was one of the crowning achievements from that period.

Sepultura’s line-up was the same as it had been through their full-length recording history – Max Cavalera was on guitars and vocals, his brother Igor Cavalera was the drummer, Andreas Kisser was the lead guitarist and Paulo Jr. was credited as the band’s bassist. In a twist, Paulo Jr. did not actually play bass on the albums, it was Andreas Kisser who actually recorded the bass parts. This was the final album for that arrangement, Paulo did begin recording bass on the follow-up Chaos A.D.

Today’s album features 9 songs in 42 minutes, a tad more bulky than a lot of peers at the time. A few re-issues and other editions exist with bonus tracks, they can be worth seeking out as they have a supremely excellent cover of Motörhead’s Orgasmatron.

Arise

The title track opens as many songs here do, with a creepy industrial-tinged intro. The setup is brief as the band slams in with riffs coated in their sick guitar tone, simple yet amazingly effective at hooking the listener in to this maelstrom of instrument bashing.

Arise may come off as an uplifting thing on surface level, but this song is about the war between religions, politics and other ways people define themselves as “better” and how it is killing the world. We only “arise” after the obliteration of mankind, under a pale grey sky – this is the end of it all, not a self-help track.

This was released as a single and got a music video, featuring the band playing in a desert. A few poked fun since the scene mimicked Slayer’s Seasons In The Abyss video. MTV was not a fan of the video in the US, not airing it due to a figure of Jesus hung on a cross and in a gas mask.

Dead Embryonic Cells

Another brief, crazy industrial sequence opens into another absolute scorcher of a thrash track. A sick rhythm riff slices through while Andreas offers up some trippy leads over everything. The song is about how people are born into a world already up shit creek. This is not simply a straight up thrash number, either – this song goes through several movements and changes, all the while retaining its core and brutal aura. My personal favorite of the entire Sepultura catalog.

Desperate Cry

This gets a nice, brief acoustic opening segment before launching into its doom-thrash main bit. It’s a tortured song (go figure) about someone facing their dying moments. The acoustic bit pops up again briefly in the middle, before more electric chugging commences to headbang out to the end.

Murder

This is a pretty straight ahead track in terms of thrashtality. The song is a grim look at Brazil’s prison system and their very, very bad track record in dealing with inmates. The topic is grotesquely disturbing and continues to this day, as I understand it.

Subtraction

On to another song that is like a thrash homing missile, this one takes off and doesn’t stop until it hits the target. There is a fair amount of “chug” and groove in this one too, showcasing that Sepultura would be a massive influence on 90’s metal to come. The song is about how a person loses their individuality through the pursuit of money and glory – subtraction of personality, as Max howls in the chorus.

Altered State

Here we get a howling wind start and some South American tribal drums to kick things off. This would be a new addition for Sepultura but would be far from the last – this drumming style would permeate Chaos A.D. The song’s title was taken from a movie of the same name and is about human experimentation on brains, fun stuff.

Under Siege (Regnum Irae)

A small bit of a stylistic departure here as the song moves quite slowly, but the doom-thrash thing fits the album well. Parts of the lyrics are transcribed from the controversial The Last Temptation Of Christ, and the song is about how people are generally born into or forced into their religion of “choice,” rather than freely picking it. In the hands of lesser bands this concept could have fallen apart pretty quick, but Sepultura show they are quite capable of working with different lyrical and musical concepts here.

Meaningless Movements

It’s back to full on thrash here, though still tempered a bit in pace. The song is another study in religion and the effects it can have on personality, essentially warping someone and especially casting out anyone with a dissenting view.

Infected Voice

The album’s closer is a true testament to Sepultura’s sheer thrash insanity, this song goes harder than hard. The running joke has been that the song is about Max Cavalera’s actual voice, which would get confused with a rabid grizzly bear before it was compared to another singer. But the song is actually about the fear of growing up, essentially, having to make tough decisions and all of that. It’s actually the most pragmatic song on an album full of deep and dark themes.

Just as music was shifting rapidly in 1991, Sepultura would truly announce their presence with Arise. The album would chart in at least six countries, no super high positions but a truly international showing. It would gain a silver certification in the UK as well as gold in Indonesia. By 1993 the album had shifted one million worldwide units, just as their true mainstream arrival in Chaos A.D. Would launch.

Arise is also critically hailed by many as Sepultura’s finest hour. The reviews from the metal press have been glowing, both on release and in the 33 years since. It makes many metal “best of” lists. The critical acclaim at the time helped vault Sepultura into widespread coverage just as heavy metal was again mutating into many other forms. The band’s influence on the mainsteam of 90’s metal can be heard in both the “groove thrash” and alt-metal to come and even in the nü-metal that would comprise the latter half of the decade. And Sepultura were kingpins of the extreme metal movement, being vastly influential to death metal and most any form of the world’s darkest arts.

I would personally hear this album for the first time in the late summer of 1991, just as I entered my freshman year of high school. A dude in front of me in algebra class knew I liked metal and asked if I’d heard this yet. I had not, so I borrowed his walkman for a minute and checked this out. I was totally blown away. I had been into the “big four” by this point but hearing this was a total ass kicker. Thank you Shane, wherever you are, for introducing me to this and shaping my musical journey, as well as probably truly rotting my young brain.