Following on from the much hyped Cavalera Conspiracy earlier this year, Max Cavalera is back with Soulfly's sixth studio album. Now, I like their debut album and think it was a pretty decent follow up to Roots (which I completely loved) but somewhere along the way, Max seemed to calm down and the anger and intensity of that first album was brought down in subsequent releases. Still, the band has been releasing decent enough albums and Soulfly's last album was quite a bit better than the tired shit of The Cavalera Conspiracy. 

Anyway, it's 2008 and Soulfly has released Conquer. The album starts off in quite a promising fashion with Blood Fire War Hate which is a dumb, loud and aggressive thrash metal song. It gave me hope for the rest of the album. Sadly that hope didn't last. Unleash has your typical staccato riffing style that seems to be the prevalent cliché in American metal today and is overall a song that is quite content being a cliché. Paranoia is a bit better but not by much and again suffers from being unable to rise above cliché. The electronic break in the middle, the thrash riffs, the Brazilian folk touch at the end all feel like stuff I've heard before from the man and he's all ready done a much better job of it.

That's pretty much the problem with this album. It feels like a rehash of everything Max Cavalera has all ready done with Soulfly. The riffs are pedestrian at best and at worst lapse into self imitation. Warmageddon is probably the most old school of the songs here with its chaotic thrash bit bringing classic Sepultura to mind but again, it's what i said earlier. You've heard all of this stuff before and there's absolutely nothing new here.  

At the same time I have to admit that this is not a bad album. It still pisses over the whole American metalcore scene and Warmageddon, Rough, Enemy Ghost and For Those About to Rot are pretty cool. Also, I suppose I should be thankful for small mercies like the complete absence of jump-da-fuck-up moments and even a lack of most things metalcore. Cavalera trying his hand at Swedish melo-death and clean vocal melodic choruses would not have made me very happy.

At the end of the day, Conquer isn't the greatest album you'll hear all year but it's definitely not going to be the worst.



Label - Roadrunner
Year of Release - 2008