Ordinarily, changes on Facebook pass with little to no reaction from me. Outside of a total overhaul of the interface, they rarely seem to be as big of a deal as people make them out to be. There is one though that has always bothered me: the switch from being able to put your favorite films, books, and music in your own words to having to link them to the pages for those works. Why? Because upon my joining the social network, I originally put Max Cavalera-era (rhyme totally intended) Sepultura in that list. From the original Bestial Devastation EP up through their best known work Roots, Sepultura during Max's tenure has to be included in any discussion of the greatest bands in the heavy metal genre. That is an insane streak of albums for any genre actually. Then, as a result of internal upheaval, Max left and created Soulfly, and both that group and Sepultura have been struggling, in my opinion, ever since. Soulfly has at least been interesting in the midst of that struggle though. Regardless of the resulting album, the experimentation that has been a major component of Soulfly is interesting enough to warrant listening through an album once, even if you never return to it. Sepultura, after a few attempts to retain the Roots vibe and magic, have seemingly just become more and more generic and fallen further and further down the totem pole, losing Igor Cavalera in the process. This latest effort, whose title I'm simply going to break down to Mediator because there's not a chance that I'm going to type out that whole title every time it comes up, is seemingly an attempt to do a hard about face back towards their previous, more celebrated works. Ross Robinson, nu-metal innovator and producer of Roots, has returned in an effort to, in his words, "smoke" his previous collaboration with the band. After a few albums without one, Mediator features a prominent guest appearance, that being ex-Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo. So, once again the angels of better nature are ignored, and a Sepultura album hits the player. Did the curiousity pay off, or is this a fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me scenario?
Well, performance wise, it paid off a bit more than I expected it to. This is a really solid slab of good old fashioned thrash/death metal. Faster than the last couple Sep albums I've heard (although, as previously mentioned, it has been a while), Andreas Kisser really rips it up on this album. He's given plenty of opportunities to both soar out on a solo or shred maniacally and make you wonder what kind of shape the guitar is left in when he's done. Paulo's bass is still there reliably rumbling away in the background as well, just like nothing ever changed. Derrick Green, who has never been the problem with the latter days of the band but became an easy scapegoat as his hiring marked the turning point, sounds properly demonic and horrifying, a better vocalist now that he's been given longer passages to stretch out screams over than the more Roots-inspired nu-metal on his first couple of efforts. New drummer Eloy Casagrande doesn't fare quite as well as his cohorts, and is especially outdone by the Lombardo cameo, but his performance rarely distracts. If anything distracts on this end, it's the mix unfortunately. Ross Robinson's mixes are characteristically dirtier, a bit more raw, but this one ends up suffering for it. Perhaps an issue of budget/equipment, or an artistic choice, it's hard to say. In either case, the album could stand to be a bit cleaner, and some of the instruments could stand to be a bit more balanced. You really have to listen for that Lombardo appearance with how low the drums are.
The biggest problem though, comes at the end of the experience. After all these great performances, what is it all in service of? What is this experience all about? Green-era Sepultura has been aiming for some big things as of late, with concept albums based on works as sacred as The Divine Comedy and as notorious as A Clockwork Orange. I can't speak to those albums' treatment of the source material, but Mediator is apparently "inspired" by Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis, a film I am very familiar with, and I have to say, this album is about as linked to Metropolis as it is to Mallrats. Both have points to make about consumer culture, and so does Mediator, but the points made on the latter are so generic that they could've been inspired by either of the former choices. I can't say Max Cavalera is one of history's great thinkers, but under his reign there was at least a sense of identity and character to those records. There was an ethos behind it. The latter day works, perhaps inspired by the dismissive reactions to the early attempts to follow up and duplicate Roots, are aiming for a much wider array of topics and targets and successfully hitting very few of them. It's hard to get a sense of the ethos of the band at this point, unless they really are that generic without a few key members. Somewhat improbably, I still find myself hoping that there is more to modern Sepultura that they have for one reason or another failed at summing up or accessing. Whether I will be willing to listen to another attempt, I can't say at this point. I guess based on Mediator it wouldn't hurt though. It will at least be performed competently.
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