Well, a quick shoutout to Bo for his excellent recommendation again. Bought tickets to go see them live here in Chicago in June. I can’t wait! I wish I had known about them about a year ago, when they were still playing bars. (Last time they were here in Sept 2017, they played Schubas, which holds maybe 150-200 people. This time they’re at the Riviera Theatre, 2500 people–so not HUGE, but not as intimate as a bar show.)
I’m planning on seeing them in either San Diego, San Francisco or Portland. I have to finalize some other plans before I can commit tho; hopefully I’ll get the other sorted soon.
That’s a great song off a great album. John Bush has IMHO one of the best metal voices out there.
Because it’s not that great of a song? Motorhead has a ton of far better songs then Ace of Spades. Iron Fist, Overkill, Stay Clean, and Killed By Death to name a few.
My personal current favorite is Head On by Armored Saint.
Roots Bloody Roots by Sepultura is the first song mentioned in the OP. And the album it comes from (Roots) also seems to be held in incredibly high regard. I’m always seeing it in “Best Metal Albums” lists. But I am completely honestly interested in hearing people give their reasons why?
I mean, to me its a fine enough song and album, but I don’t really understand why it’s considered a masterpiece by so many. I was willing to chalk it up to it being ground breaking/different than everything else at the time, but Roots was released in 1996, four years after Vulgar Display of Power, and two years after Far Beyond Driven. I mean bands like Converge were already putting out metalcore albums around that time. Maybe I personally put Pantera on too much of a pedestal, or my fandom of metalcore is clouding my judgment… but why is Roots universally (seemingly) considered a classic?
Sepultura was already considered a great metal band when Roots came out, but it was the pinnacle of what they had been building too. Chaos A.D. is not a bad album and the production values on it were a huge improvement over their earlier albums, but Roots seemed to hit everything they were moving towards:
Tribal beats were awesome
Peak Max Cavalera - his vocals were never better before or since
It just has great songs. While Roots Bloody Roots is a great song, perhaps the best metal single ever released, I think that Dusted, Ratamahatta, Straighthate are all metal classics, too.
It’s a shame Max left after this album, but I kind of doubt they could have topped it. His Soulfly band is not bad and you could compile a great Sepultura album by taking songs from all of Soulfly’s albums, but Soulfly lacks consistency.
Sepultura also declined after this album, which I think makes a lot of people think very fondly on this one “peak” moment for them. Like Soulfly, you can compile a good Sepultura album by picking songs from all their post-Roots releases, but they just weren’t as good anymore. Not Derrick Green’s fault, either. Roots just caught something special and it means a lot to many people.
I have a playlist on my Ipod of all the best Sepultura songs since Roots and all the best Soulfly songs. Nice, great stuff. But Roots is still probably better than both of those playlists. It was just a great album.
And, of course, it’s just subjective. You can not account for taste.
Note: Even a great album like Roots still is flawed. It has “Lookaway”, a song sung by Jonathan Davis from Korn and it does not fit tonally or stylistically with the rest of the album. The album is better experienced without it.