Sepultura – A-lex (SPV) Long running Brazilian Thrash/Heavy Metal band doing their 2nd concept record in a row (last one was about Dante’s “Inferno”). This one’s about Alex from the book (and movie) A Clockwork Orange. Overall it’s pretty riffy but songwise it doesn’t always work with 18 tracks. Although, addable for the few good songs.

(((1))) Short riffy intro.
((((2)))) Aggressive, speedy thrash with some Droogs-related title. Dodgy, almost nu-meddle bits in the breakdown that are mercifully short.
((3)) Slow, chug-chug, “tribal”/call & response nonsense that they did like on “Roots”.
((4)) Acoustic guitar noodling, sludgy, heavy riffs with that modern metal level of boredom. (See Machine Head, etc).
(((5))) (FCC “Fucked up” sung once) NYHC-styled modern metal somehow it rises above the usual clichés.
((6)) Slow, drum-focuses, good steady riff, very downtuned instrumental.
(7) Yikes! Bro-metal gone thrash? Next!
(((8))) Slow, sludgey, catch. Pretty good considering it’s basically Pantera crossed with Pelican.
((9)) Ambient intro, drums, spoken word, then lame clean singing later goes into a metallic form but even that falls flat.
(((10))) Gorjira-like riffing into decent but extremely basic thrash like an even more rudimentary Prong.
(11) Down-tuned, slow, nu-metal lameness.
((12)) Ambient noise, decent riffs, short interlude.
(((13)) NYHC style, chunky metallic sound that eventually gets better over time. (Or at least the guitars do).
(14) Super-shitty beat, wah-wah and very forced riffs & pummeling that goes nowhere. Very flat.
((((15)))) Stripped down & thrashy with a kind of annoying breakdown. Seems like the album would be better if it was filled with songs just like this.
(16) Silly reinterpretation of Beethoven’s 9th. Highly unnecessary. Ritchie Blackmore did this a much better 30 odd years ago.
(17) Ambient chill & trip hop? OK, but on a fuggin’ Sepultura album?
((((18)))) Basic hardcore-like thrashy metal. This is more like it.