Thirty Years of Metal Plus Fourteen Drums Equals Gold

Sepultura is a heavy metal insititution. You can make an argument that modern metal, as a genre, was heavily assisted by their skull-crushing “Chaos AD” release. To this day, that record still gets name-dropped regularly even 20-plus years since its initial release.  They have influenced a generation of heavy metal fans and have inspired those in their home country of Brazil to continue to create heavy music.

To celebrate their 30 years of music, touring and being overall one of the greatest metal bands in the modern era- Sepultura (which means “grave” in Portuguese) headlined the Rock in Rio festival in Rio De Jenero. They brought with them a French industrial drum outfit called Les Tambours du Bronx to help add some depth to the performance. This is the audio recording of that performance, which also has a DVD accompaniment, and it’s pretty special performance indeed.

First, let’s address the technical ends of the recording to gain an understanding of how big this performance was. Les Tambours du Bronx consists of 14 oil drums that are used as percussion. Each oil drum has a drummer at it. Plus they have two musicians who use samples to help heighten the experience. That’s 16 people, in case you are counting, plus the four-piece that is Sepultura. To capture that competently is a very hard task to do, and it seems almost easy in this disc. Everything is clear and sounds incredible. Kudos to the engineers who deserve a huge round of applause for making that happen.

The first song off the live set is “Kaiowas,” an instrumental from Chaos A.D. which remains a perennial fan favorite. Even on headphones you can feel how incredible the addition of the 14 extra drums must’ve sounded live. The next song on the album, “Spectrum,” is taken from their 2011 release, Kairos. Live, the adding of the extra percussion brings this crescendo to full tilt quickly. The addition of the sampler/keys digs itself a nice groove here, providing an unexpected extra layer of depth.

Further into the record is a pretty odd cover. “Firestarter” by Prodigy would be the last thing you would expect Sepultura to play, but they do a great job of keeping the original feel of the song, again using the sampler and keys, while still putting Sepultura’s stamp of heaviness. “Roots Bloody Roots,” their big underground hit, is a barn burner. The addition of Les Tambours du Bronx works well with them. Seeing as how percussion-based they have been over the years, it only makes sense that their songs work extremely well on this performance. They’re still a great band and this live record proves it. Viva Sepultura!