Soulfly - Conquer

After releasing five albums in the past ten years with Soulfly and a short, but fruitful cooperation with his brother Iggor, Max Cavalera is back with his sixth Soulfly record. Most metalheads will know by now that a new Soulfly album mostly doesn’t contain much more than the expected tribal-thrash metal. On Conquer there are some minor changes in the sound, though this doesn’t mean we get the unexpected, though. Conquer is a typical, furious and intense Soulfly release, but is that a bad thing?

Normally, Soulfly starts off with a mid-tempo song, but not this time. With a “ready for war”-vibe, the album kicks off very aggressively with ‘Blood Fire War Hate’. Max and co assault their fans with a great thrash-song, which probably will unleash hell on several summer festivals and other gigs they’re going to play in support of their latest effort. With additional vocals of Morbid Angel’s David Vincent on ‘Blood Fire War Hate’, Soulfly maintains its tradition of inviting guest vocalists for their albums. Like David Vincent, Dave Peters of Throwdown also accompanies Max on one track. This particular track, ‘Unleash’, is also the first single for Conquer and it contains highly explosive thrash-parts as well as the familiar tribal sound; a perfect mixture. 

After Cavalera Conspiracy, Max wanted to write a stronger, uncompromised statement with Soulfly. At some points it looks like they’ve used some leftover CC riffs, but all of the material still has that typical Soulfly-sound. Conquer has become the perfect balance between brutality and experimentation. The atypical inspiration on this album derives from Max’ trip to Egypt. Instead of visiting five different locations, like on the Dark Ages album, Egypt alone already was enough. For example, The eerie, tribal outro of ‘For Those About To Rot’ is derived from a gypsy band which was playing near the Nile. Furthermore, Soulfly also collaborated with the French dub artist Fedayi Pacha. Fedayi makes dark and really heavy dub and he is responsible for the outro of ‘Touching The Void’, which is a doomy ode to Black Sabbath. 

With all these different experimentations on each album, these four guys aren’t making it easier for themselves, although they do it with passion for music and that’s something the listener feels. With Conquer, they created a record that comes straight from their hearts. Without studio trickery, without computerized gladdening, but with real music. If you love music, you will love Conquer!