The Cavalera Brothers in Lincoln - June 8, 2022

It has been a long time since I have posted here.  There has not really been much to post.  This is the first concert I have been to since December, 2019.  Fucking pandemic.  I keep meaning to get around to doing top albums from the last couple years.  I need to figure out what those would be first.  And that will take some work, because I have been picking up a ton of albums during this time.

Anyway.  So, the concert.  I will get to the headliners in awhile.  The first band taking the stage was playing as I was getting there, so I did not see their whole set.  That band was local metal band Deadechoes.  Deadechoes started out as something of a nu-metal/groove metal band, but they have ditched most of that in exchange for a much more thrash-oriented sound.  They sounded damn impressive honestly, much better than they did on the album I have from the band.  Apparently it was the band's last show with their bassist.  I am not sure what that means for the future of the band.  It is always nice to see a local band at these shows.  Nebraska has some surprisingly good metal bands these days.

Healing Magic was next to the stage.  Their name really does not fit with the band's sound, which is a dark and aggressive form of stoner doom metal, with some rough vocals.  Healing Magic is fronted by Igor Cavalera Jr., oddly not Iggor Cavalera's son, but Max's.  I was fairly impressed by the band, much more than I was the couple times I have heard them on Liquid Metal.  I may even pick up an album one of these days.

Up next was Warbringer.  This is actually the third time I have seen Warbringer live.  The first time was when they were a young band supporting Overkill.  Oddly, I was wearing my Overkill t-shirt on Tuesday.  The second time was when they were supporting Dark Tranquillity about five years ago.  Warbringer always puts on a great show.  They are easily one of the better modern thrash metal bands and each of their albums absolutely rips.  Warbringer played a nice selection encompassing much of their history.  They were electrifying as usual.  

And finally, the Cavalera brothers took the stage.  Max and Iggor Cavalera were founding members of Sepultura, one of my absolute favorite bands.  Sepultura was my primary gateway into the more extreme styles of metal.  The band was making major waves in the mid 1990's after the release of the Roots album, but some internal strife among manager Gloria Cavalera (Max's wife) and the rest of the band split the group in two.  Max left, creating Soulfly, and the band brought in Derrick Green to take over vocals.  Iggor left in 2006 and the brothers reunited with Cavalera Conspiracy.  

I am not really sure what they were calling themselves on Tuesday night, but they were playing much of the albums Beneath the Remains and Arise, two of my personal favorite Sepultura albums.  I had to go, it was as close as I was ever going to get to see the band that was my gateway into extreme metal.  I saw Sepultura before, but neither Cavalera brother was still in the band at the time.  The band sounded great live.  These two albums are known for their ferocity, and that came through in the concert.  It was a great concert and as close as I will ever get to seeing the classic Sepultura, the one I grew up with.

Reevaluating Schizophrenia by Sepultura

Yeah, I know I just did a similar post for a Sepultura album earlier this year when I covered Arise.  Well, this album has been kind of begging for a closer look for some time as well. 

As I have mentioned many times on this blog, I loved Sepultura when I was in high school.  But this album eluded me for many years and it was the last of the Max Cavalera albums that I picked up.  It was not until well into my first job after law school that I finally managed to track it down.  And by then, my obsession with Sepultura had long since passed.  So, it just did not make the impact that many of the band's early albums made.  Add to that the kind of crappy production, at least on the copy that I picked up and there were a few reasons why this one really did not make much of an impact.

Schizophrenia is a transition album of sorts.  It is Sepultura's sophomore full-length, arriving just a year after the proto-death metal stomp of Morbid Visions.  That album helped pave the way for not only death metal, but also black metal.  Two years later came Beneath the Remains, which is the band's most straightforward brutal thrash metal album.  So Schizophrenia sort of exists in a state of limbo between the two sounds.  It features the best of both sounds with the raw animal aggression of Morbid Visions and the uncompromising brutality of Beneath the Remains.

In addition, there are some terrific, classic Sepultura songs on this release.  It features pit classics like "Escape to the Void" and "R.I.P. (Rest in Pain)".  But it also contains the spellbinding instrumental "Inquisition Symphony", which remains one of the band's most ambitious songs from their early years.

This album is finally sinking in more these days.  It is a fantastic raw and brutal album and exemplifies the amazing talent that Sepultura had in the early days.  It is a shame that Sepultura spent so much time chasing trends.  A few more albums like this would have been much preferred to the nu-metal direction the band took in the mid 1990's.

Reevaluating Arise by Sepultura

Longtime readers of this blog may recall that Sepultura was a hugely important band during my formative years as a metalhead.  They were truly my gateway into more extreme forms of metal, not that they were overly extreme during the time period, but Morbid Visions was my first death metal album.  Sepultura was also the first band who I truly attempted to get as much music as I could find.  I picked up singles, compilations with new songs, EPs and even bootlegs in my quest to add as much Sepultura music as I could. 

But for some reason, despite all these random pick-ups, I could not find Schizophrenia, Beneath the Remains, or Arise.  So I missed out on three of the band's best albums.  It was not until much later that I finally added those three releases.  Beneath the Remains quickly took over as my favorite Sepultura album due to the presence of "Inner Self" and the title track.  Schizophrenia never really caught on due to the terrible production.  Arise also did not truly make much impact on me.  That changed recently though.

I am not sure what happened.  One day I was listening to the album.  And I listened to it again.  And again.  And I kept listening to it over and over for several days.  Then I realized it.  Arise is the best album Sepultura ever released.  It is the perfect blend of their earlier extreme thrash and their later more groove-oriented style. 

In addition, this album features some of the greatest songs Sepultura ever recorded, and several of them were favorites of mine from long before I picked up the album.  "Dead Embryonic Cells", the title track and "Desperate Cry" are all incredible songs that are equal parts brutally intense and completely infectious.  There is truly not a weak song on the entire album.  It closes with another classic in "Infected Voice".

I do not know why it took me so long to truly appreciate this album.  I was once a huge Sepultura fan, and yet, somehow their best album eluded me for so long.  Not anymore though.  I have a new appreciation for this album. 

Sepultura: Machine Messiah (2017)

Way back in the summer between my freshman and sophomore year in high school, I gravitated toward Brazilian metal legends Sepultura.  It was the first extreme metal band I was ever really into.  Of course this was at the time that Roots was released.  I picked it up and then quickly picked up a number of their other releases, including singles, EPs, and other oddities (including one bootleg).  Now, I recognize their earlier material as their best, but Sepultura was a very important band in my evolution as a metalhead.  Then, Max Cavalera left the band and after being very disappointed with the album Against, I stopped picking up new releases by the band.  Until just recently.

After Derrick Green took over vocal duties from the departed Max Cavalera, Sepultura cratered for a while.  Their sound went in more of a hardcore direction and the passion was simply not there.  It seems apparent now that the band was often following trends: evolving into a groove metal band when Pantera hit it big and then nu-metal when Korn was the flavor of the day.  Then when extreme metal came back into popularity, the band once again shifted in that direction.  That being said, the quality of the band's albums has been gradually improving over the last several years, to the point that I was actually impressed enough to pick this one up.

Things get off to kind of a weird start on the opening title track here.  Sepultura is not really known for their melodic sensibility, and we have a more subtle, softer sound on this track for the first few minutes.  Green eventually starts screaming, but the tone of the song remains more melodic and somber than their typical rage and anger.  It returns to that rage and anger from the second track on.  "I am the Enemy" definitely has more of a defiant punk edge to it, and the simple, groove-laden riffs certainly help.  The band still utilizes some tribal drumming ("Phantom Self"), an element that gained the band mainstream notice in the mid 1990's.  For the most part, this album is more of the same groove metal that the band has been playing for the last several years, but there is something much more savage and bestial this time around.

The album is something of a concept album, about technology taking over people's lives, and the problems that would likely arise from technology taking over.  Think Terminator.  I have not spent any time reviewing the lyrics to look at the story of the album, I just know it is there.

This is easily the best album Sepultura has released since Max left the band.  That really is not saying that much though.  It is probably better than Roots, but maybe not as good as Chaos A.D., so of course the older stuff still blows it out of the water.  Still though, it is nice to hear something decent from the band that I loved so much going into high school.

Testament and Sepultura in Sioux Falls: May 4

In the last month now, I have seen four legendary thrash metal bands.  Testament and Sepultura were just the latest after seeing Anthrax and Kreator in April.  This was a different venue for us though.  The show was at The District in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, about a two-and-a-half hour drive for us.  So it definitely made for a late night, but it was worth it.  There were actually four bands there that night, which I will get to.

Both Testament and Sepultura have been longtime favorite bands for me.  I have been a huge fan of both since I was in high school.  Sepultura was the first band of whom I bought a t-shirt, though I lost it at some point.  It just sort of disappeared at some point.  As for Testament, well, my favorite song of all time is "Return to Serenity" and I went to a signing before they played a show in Lincoln when I was 18.  Unfortunately I did not get to see them that night since it was a 19 and over show.  Chuck Billy had his cancer scare shortly after that and it would be years before the band got back together.

The first band was a relatively young band from Germany called Dying Gorgeous Lies.  I was a little skeptical about what the band would sound like based on that name.  The name suggests they would be more at home opening for The Devil Wears Prada.  But no, they are definitely a thrash metal band.  The singer is a woman whose voice reminds me very much of Holy Moses singer Sabine Classen, so I definitely am on board.  We missed the band's first couple of songs as we had a long drive and decided to try out a Cambodian restaurant before the show.  But what I heard of the band was impressive.  They are definitely a German thrash metal throwback and given my love for that style, I will have to check them out.

Prong was next to the stage, and this is another band that I have enjoyed since I was in high school.  I used to catch them on Headbanger's Ball quite a bit when "Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck" was out.  I have not been keeping up with them for a very long time so I was surprised that I recognized most of the songs they played.  They stuck pretty well to their first four albums for most of their set.  That is generally their best material anyway.  They definitely sounded good.  It has been over 20 years since I have heard any new material by the band, but their old stuff still sounds great.  They closed out their show with "Snap..." which was appropriate.

I have not been the biggest fan of Sepultura since Max Cavalera left the band, but their albums with him are some of my absolute favorites.  They did play a lot of material from their early years, which was appreciated.  Derrick Green's voice has grown on me a little over the years and after some uneven releases, they are starting to put out some better stuff again now.  Most of the stuff from their Max albums sounded incredible, and I did like the songs they played off their latest album enough that I may have to check it out.  Their last three songs ("Refuse/Resist", "Ratamahatta", and "Roots Bloody Roots") were really amazing and were the highlight of their set.  They were definitely hitting their stride by that point and their energy was infectious.

Finally, Testament took the stage and I finally got to see them after being disappointed back when I was in high school.  The wait was worth it as Testament was incredible.  They played a mix of songs going way back to their first album and generally covering most of their early releases and also featuring a generous sampling of stuff from the new album.  Everyone was in top form and each of the musicians was given the spotlight at one point to show off their abilities.  My wife was quite impressed with Alex Skolnick.  I was more interested in Steve DiGiorgio's bass work myself.  The only disappointment with their show was that they did not play "Return to Serenity", though since that is a slower song, I should not have been that surprised.

This was an early birthday present from my wife and it was a terrific show.  Sepultura and Testament are still two of my all-time favorite bands, Testament possibly being number one.  Definitely a good birthday present.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 104

ARTIST:  Sepultura
ORIGIN:  Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais (Brazil)
TITLE:  Against
LABEL:  Roadrunner Records
YEAR:  1998
GENRE:  Groove Metal
FAVORITE SONG:  "Choke"
NOTES:  I picked this one up at the same time as the prior Testament album, so it was the night before I took the ACT.  I had not heard anything about this album prior to buying it, and if I had I probably would not have gotten it at all.  I did not even know Sepultura had a new album out until seeing this on the shelf.  This was the first album without Max Cavalera.  Derrick Green was the new vocalist and he is not significantly different than Max, but it was still a little tough to get used to him.  Musically this album is not much different than Roots.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 97

ARTIST:  Sepultura
ORIGIN:  Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais (Brazil)
TITLE:  Blood-Rooted
LABEL:  Roadrunner Records
YEAR:  1997
GENRE:  Groove Metal/Thrash Metal
FAVORITE SONG:  "Procreation of the Wicked"
NOTES:  This was a collection of oddities, mostly collected from early to mid 1990's and included covers, live tracks, demos, and remixes.  There is some decent stuff on here and it is nice that these harder-to-find tracks are combined into one release, rather than having to track them all down, but this is still the less-interesting part of Sepultura's history.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 89

ARTIST:  Sepultura
ORIGIN:  Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais (Brazil)
TITLE:  Third World Posse
LABEL:  Roadracer Records
YEAR:  1992
GENRE:  Thrash Metal
FAVORITE SONG:  "Inner Self"
NOTES:  This is a very short but brutal EP, featuring a few live songs, a cover of the Dead Kennedys "Drug Me" and the track "Dead Embryonic Cells".  It certainly is not an essential release, but I was still picking up as many Sepultura albums as I could find at this time.  Anything would do, and this one was pretty cheap.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 86

ARTIST:  Sepultura
ORIGIN:  Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais (Brazil)
TITLE:  Hatred
LABEL:  Oxygen
YEAR:  1996
GENRE:  Thrash/Groove Metal
FAVORITE SONG:  "Inner Self"
NOTES:  Have you figured out that I liked Sepultura in high school?  Searching for this album in Sepultura's official discography will be fruitless.  This is a bootleg.  It is the only bootleg in my collection.  Much of it is from a live concert in Holland, though there are parts from another concert and some studio tracks as well on it.  I remember finding it at the local music store which had a large amount of bootlegs on sale at one point.  I found the Sepultura album because I was basically obsessed with the band at this point.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 82

ARTIST:  Sepultura
ORIGIN:  Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais (Brazil)
TITLE:  Morbid Visions/Bestial Devastation
LABEL:  Cogumelo Records
YEAR:  1986
GENRE:  Thrash/Black/Death Metal
FAVORITE SONG:  "Troops of Doom"
NOTES:  I was in the middle of my massive obsession with Sepultura when I picked this one up.  Of course this one is completely different than anything I had heard from the band to this point.  I was mostly sticking to the groove metal era of the band.  So this was a major difference from what I had been used to up to that point.  It was the most raw and chaotic album I had heard.  So it took me a little while to really get into.  But once I did I was hooked.  This is still my favorite album by the band.  It also features the band's first EP.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 74

ARTIST:  Sepultura
ORIGIN:  Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais (Brazil)
TITLE:  Dead Embryonic Cells
LABEL:  Roadrunner Records
YEAR:  1991
GENRE:  Thrash Metal
FAVORITE SONG:  "Troops of Doom"
NOTES:  This was a single featuring the title track, a cover of the Motorhead classic "Orgasmatron", and a re-recorded version of "Troops of Doom" which was initially on the Morbid Visions album.  There is not much to say about it other than that.  I was a huge Sepultura fan in high school and I was picking up anything and everything by the band that I could find, which included singles, bootlegs, and more.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 71

ARTIST:  Sepultura
ORIGIN:  Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais (Brazil)
TITLE:  Chaos A.D.
LABEL:  Roadrunner Records
YEAR:  1993
GENRE:  Groove Metal/Thrash Metal
FAVORITE SONG:  "Nomad"
NOTES:  I have actually had two versions of this album.  The first version was the original with a bonus track featuring demonic laughing.  Kind of boring really.  The second version featured "Chaos B.C.", a remix of "Refuse/Resist" and some live tracks.  My first metal t-shirt featured Sepultura's "Territory".  I have no idea what ever happened to that.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 67

ARTIST:  Sepultura
ORIGIN:  Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais (Brazil)
TITLE:  Refuse/Resist
LABEL:  Roadrunner Records
YEAR:  1993
GENRE:  Groove Metal
FAVORITE SONG:  "Refuse/Resist"
NOTES:  At one point I made a decision that Sepultura was my favorite band and I tried to get as many of their releases as I possibly could.  This was my second release by the band and was an EP that was released prior to the Chaos A.D. album.  This features the "Refuse/Resist" track as well as a number of covers of bands like Final Conflict, Ratos de Porao, and Motorhead, and some live tracks.  It is a pretty decent little EP.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 59

ARTIST:  Sepultura
ORIGIN:  Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais (Brazil)
TITLE:  Roots
LABEL:  Roadrunner Records
YEAR:  1996
GENRE:  Groove Metal
FAVORITE SONG:  "Ratamahatta"
NOTES:  The last of the albums I got on the long road trip.  I loved this album for several years after getting it.  This was my first Sepultura album.  Obviously it is not my favorite now, but I do really enjoy the use of tribal drums in the music.  This album went a long way towards getting me into more extreme styles of metal.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 55

ARTIST:  Various
ORIGIN:  Various
TITLE:  Metallurgy
LABEL:  Volume Records
YEAR:  1995
GENRE:  Heavy Metal, Groove Metal, Hardcore, etc.
FAVORITE SONG:  Sepultura: "Refuse/Resist (Live)"
NOTES:  This one is kind of odd.  It is a compilation, but a lot of the tracks are not terribly representative of the bands' sounds.  Faith No More and Kyuss in particular have less-than-impressive tracks.  The album did help introduce me to GZR, Fear Factory, and Napalm Death as well as further catch my attention with Sepultura.  There are a lot of hardcore tracks on it though, which I do not care for.

Albums You Hated On First Listen, But Grew to Love

Has there ever been an album that just did nothing for you the first time you heard it, but that album has grown on you? I have had more than a few.

SEPULTURA: MORBID VISIONS
The most obvious of these is Sepultura's Morbid Visions. I first heard this album when I was just beginning to get into Sepultura. Of course at the time, Sepultura was more of a groove/nu-metal band, so when I heard this proto-blackened death metal album, I was shocked and frankly disappointed. However, over the years, this has become one of my favorite Sepultura albums. Its rawness and brutality is the reason.

SAXON: INTO THE LABYRINTH
One of the biggest bands of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal in the late 1970's/early 1980's, Saxon is also one of the few bands from that scene to have put together a long and productive career. Nevertheless, for some reason I was just not totally impressed with this 2009 release upon the first time I heard it. However, its catchiness eventually caught up to me. This is not a completely metal album, more of a borderline hard rock/metal album and that's probably what caused me to dislike it at first.

EDGUY: TINNITUS SANCTUS
German power metal band Edguy is kind of a weird group. I expected something along the lines of Primal Fear, Blind Guardian, Helloween, or Gamma Ray when I picked up this album, but that is definitely not what I got. What I got was something similar to Saxon's release, more of a hard rock style with little to none of the typical elements associated with German power metal. It was their sense of humor and their ability to write a good song that drew me in after my initial disappointment.

VANDERHOOF: VANDERHOOF
This was an album I received in a lot of cut-out CDs I bought from a seller on ebay one day. It was not one of the main drawing points, and in fact I had never heard of the band. Vanderhoof is the side project of Kurdt Vanderhoof, guitarist for Metal Church, so I expected something similar to Metal Church's style. Vanderhoof though was created for the guitarist to play a style more along his main influences, which was Deep Purple-style hard rock/heavy metal. It took some getting used to as I was never the biggest fan of Deep Purple, but this album really is pretty damn good.

GARDENIAN: SINDUSTRIES
After hearing their Soulburner album, I decided I kind of liked Gardenian's brand of Swedish melodeath. It was poppy and infectious, but still pretty decent, so I picked this album up cheap. This was a complete departure though, experimenting with progressive song structures and longer songs and abandoning many of the more accessible elements of their sound. The album was challenging and different, but eventually that is what appealed to me. To the point that I realize this is the better Gardenian album.

Let's open it up. What do you think?

Albums That Have Not Stood the Test of Time: Sepultura: Roots

I am listening to this album as I type this. I remember being absolutely blown away by this album when I first heard it. It was my favorite album for quite awhile. I had just recently discovered the band when this album came out. It was the most brutal album I had heard to that point. What made it even more interesting was the use of tribal drumming, something that had not been done as effectively prior to this album.

So what happened?

Well for one, I discovered the band's back catalog was much more interesting. Their early raw, brutal thrash was one of the influences on the formation of death and black metal. In general the band put out better material earlier in their career.

Secondly, Max Cavalera left the band soon after this release and the band went straight downhill from there.

Third, and most important, my tastes have changed. You see, this is basically a nu metal/groove metal album at its core. It may be dressed up a little bit, but the music is mostly simple and dumbed down. That was not what Sepultura created earlier on. The riffs were simple and non-melodic, the guitar solos were basically gone and there were few, if any dynamics.

So no, Roots did not stand the test of time.

My 100 Favorite Metal Bands Pt. 86: Sepultura

Sepultura was probably the first extreme metal band I really got into. I first heard them on a Tribute to Black Sabbath album covering "Symptom of the Universe". I was pretty impressed. I actually got into them when they were a bit past their prime. Roots was the first new album I got by them and I was blown away, at the time. However, I soon discovered their amazing past releases when they were one of the best brutal thrash metal bands out there. Even better was their proto-black/death metal material. Sepultura is now just a shadow of their former selves, but their early material still stands today as some amazing extreme metal.

FAVORITE ALBUM: BENEATH THE REMAINS

My Favorite Metal Band from Brazil

No surprises here really. Sepultura was one of my first favorite metal bands that was on the more extreme side. Of course I got into them around the time that Chaos A.D. was released. Still, Sepultura put out one hell of a good groove metal album with that release. Even Roots has its moments, mostly due to the use of tribal percussion. However, their best material is undoubtedly their earlier stuff. Morbid Visions and Bestial Devastation are excellent examples of early black/death metal and Beneath the Remains is one of my all-time favorite thrash metal albums. After vocalist Max Cavalera left, Sepultura became more of a hardcore/groove metal band and I kind of lost interest. Of course Max's stuff was not much better. Still though, the material from their debut EP through Chaos A.D. is ridiculously powerful.

NOTABLE SCENES: Brazil had an amazing scene in the mid 1980's that blurred the lines between thrash, death, and black metal.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Sarcofago
Hibria
Angra
Krisiun

Year in Metal: 1991

ATHEIST: UNQUESTIONABLE PRESENCE
I looked at one of their albums already in this series, it's time to look at a second. As much as I enjoyed the other album, this one is by far my favorite from Atheist. The band on this album further experimented with some of the non-metal influences from their previous albums. There is a very strong jazz influence present from the get-go. The band utilizes complex rhythms and unusual time signatures and even throws in some latin influences as well. This is an extremely original and thoughtful album. Atheist has recently reformed and will be releasing a new album this year. Can't wait.

DARK ANGEL: TIME DOES NOT HEAL
The tagline on this album is "9 songs, 67 minutes, 246 riffs!" I have no idea if that's an exaggeration, but it probably isn't. There are tons of riffs on this monster of an album from this highly underrated Bay Area thrash metal band. This album is extremely intense, but it does not feel quite like over an hour of music. Perhaps that's because the riffs are coming so quickly and furiously that it beats you into submission. No idea, but this is an incredible early 90's thrash metal album.

OVERKILL: HORRORSCOPE
Overkill has never put out a bad album, so picking a favorite album is sometimes difficult. This one is up there for me though. This is an extremely cohesive and powerful album from the East Coast thrash giants. Every single song is a masterpiece. Every single riff is amazing. This is easily one of my favorite albums by Overkill, and quite possibly my favorite. This is an absolute beast.

SEPULTURA: ARISE
Often considered the band's finest hour, this album unfortunately finds Sepultura at the end of the road as far as their thrash metal sound is concerned. But what a way to go. The album featured the same sound as their previous album but with experimentation in industrial and latin percussion. This album features some of the major Sepultura classics such as the title track, "Dead Embryonic Cells", "Desperate Cry", as well as a cover of Motorhead's "Orgasmatron". This album helped Sepultura break into the mainstream and ultimately helped doom their creativity.

SUFFOCATION: EFFIGY OF THE FORGOTTEN
Suffocation completely changed the game in death metal. It was now becoming a race to be the most extreme, the most brutal, and the most traumatizing death metal band. Death metal has never been subtle, but Suffocation took the genre to all new levels of brutality on their debut. The band has never released a bad album, and this was only the beginning. Surprisingly technical as well, there are interesting elements to listen for if you listen close enough. This album completely changed the death metal landscape and we are all the better for it.

Honorable Mentions: Armored Saint: Symbol of Salvation, Bolt Thrower: War Master, Cannibal Corpse: Butchered at Birth, Death: Human, Heathen: Victims of Deception, Morbid Angel: Blessed are the Sick, Ozzy Osbourne: No More Tears, Prong: Prove You Wrong, Soundgarden: Badmotorfinger.

Bands that formed in 1991: Acid Bath, Angra, Behemoth, Belphegor, Burzum, Cradle of Filth, Down, Emperor, Enslaved, Marduk, Nevermore.