SOULFLY – Omen

Brazil’s best known Metal star, Max Cavalera, returns with a new album by Soulfly, the band he started after his departure from Sepultura some thirteen years ago. This is the seventh release, and it goes back to the Thrash roots even more that its predecessors.

What’s good

Max’s love for Nu Metal has definitely gone cold. Omen is a statement, even more so then the last album, Conquer, with its folky influences. Most of the songs come straight to the point and hit you where it hurts. The opener “Bloodbath & Beyond” is an impressive and loud sign that Max has come full circle. If you add the better-than-ever guitar work of Marc Rizzo and the fact that the tribal influences which had become increasingly repetitive are reduced,  then this is an album that Thrashers from everywhere should definitely check out, even if they had bad experiences with some of the earlier Soulfly releases. Listen to “Kingdom”, “Jeffrey Dahmer” and “Mega-Doom” and you will love it.

What’s bad

Not necessarily bad, but peculiar is the fact that one can hardly see a difference these days between Soulfly and Cavalera Conspiracy. Many songs on Omen just as on Inflikted shine because even the less spectacular songs – of which there are a handful on the album as on any other Soulfly release so far – clock in mostly under four minutes. Keeping it short keeps it suspenseful, with one exception. The otherwise nice instrumental “Soulfly VII” does not fit at all. It ends the album on a strange note, but Soufly fans are used to that by now. Which does not make it any better.

Soufly is on the right track again, and Omen is a very enjoyable release, even though there is nothing new or original to be found on the record. But sometimes bread and butter saturates better than fancy nouvelle cuisine, and in that sense Omen is a full meal.