Is it 1991 again? Because Cavalera Conspiracy’s new album Psychosis feels like something that’s as fierce as something we’d get from these Brazilian brothers in the early 1990s. It seems to revisit some of the biggest and loudest points in the careers of both brothers with the overall sound of this album feeling like an aggressive and warlike revisit of Chaos A.D. and Arise throughout with bits of Max’s old side project Nailbomb thrown into the latter half. Psychosis mixes all of this together into a bright-burning molotov cocktail of extreme metal that feels as though Max and Igor have been rejuvenated and acquired a lust for speed and bloodshed. Psychosis has the thrashing energy for real terror.
Don’t expect a bunch of chugs on here. This album instead runs on speed and barrages of savage guitars. Even the groovier songs sound angrier, more ferocious, and downright hellish compared to what we normally expect from a modern Cavalera album. Rapid-fire drums and menacing riffs break you into the album and give you a hint as to the torrent of terror you’ve just entered. The first half of Psychosis is a ferocious volley of menacing thrash as the opening number “Insane” demonstrates quite clearly with its raw speed and rage. It can also handle groovier sounds while maintaining the menace, with “Spectral War” mixing groove riffs and thrash pacing to create a song that feels like being trampled under thousands of charging hooves. Max’s vocals are still as vicious as ever and make the atmosphere all the more chaotic. On terms of the musical backbone of Psychosis, It’s strong as rebar and covered in spikes.
Psychosis sounds positively evil and does some calling back to the sounds of Sepultura’s glory days. It doesn’t totally match up to how iconic Arise or Chaos A.D. were. However, you can tell that Cavalera Conspiracy is trying to hit new heights rather than simply pumping another album out to stay alive. “Spectral War” is energetic, evil, and memorable, as are other songs on this album. They sound like songs that were written to be remembered and replayed like the band had channeled all of their fury into this. This album also stretches the boundaries a bit by using Nailbomb-esque industrial elements on some later tracks. These tracks aren’t especially mind-blowing, but the industrial elements mesh well with the music at large, and overall are still decent, just not as blisteringly savage as the earlier songs. It at least shows a willingness to still experiment even after all these years, and to make their experimentation go smoothly with their core sound. That is something that I find commendable from a band like this that tends to get brushed aside as a side attraction to Soulfly and Sepultura. They resurrect the old strong sound and infuse it with some new power.
Psychosis feels like an album that took the best parts of the Cavalera brothers’ careers and decided to not only pay tribute to them, but revive them in such a way that they feel reinvigorated and just as crunchy as ever. This may not hold a candle to classic Sepultura albums, but it tries the hardest it can to get up to that level and delivers some pretty ripping songs in the process. Psychosis pounds, shreds and smashes while staying as menacing and vicious as one hundred clones of the warrior on the front cover. Whether it’s the manic thrashing songs, the imposing march-like groovier pieces, or even the noisy industrial bits, you always feel like you’re under siege from Cavalera Conspiracy’s assault. This album hit me way harder than I expected. It may not be a game-changing masterpiece, but Psychosis shows us that the bros from Brazil can still deliver super savage metal even after all these years and all the stylistic shifts. Granted, the outro narration on the last minute of the last track is cheesy, but after listening to the other forty minutes of this blast from the past, I think they can get a pass on that.
