Sepultura - Under A Pale Grey Sky
(Roadrunner)One wonders why archive pieces this cool are held back so long, Under A Pale Grey Sky being the chomping last concert by the band with Max still heading the charge. The sound is amazing, and fully 28 tracks are offered, capping a string of three of the greatest ramp-up and explode albums of all time: Arise, Chaos A.D. and Roots beginning and ending the prodigious, classic run of this productive, useful, inspirational band and band chemistry. Recorded just before Christmas '96 at the Brixton Academy in London, this is Sepultura in all its percussive glory, crisp as a fake hundred dollar bill, Max exhorting the crowd to riot for change, his backline matching his battle cries with a subconsciously roiling performance built from years sweating it out with their tribe of headbanged followers. Nice artwork, but could have used a little more from the packaging in terms of liner notesÉ well, OK, here's what Max told me: "I thought, yeah, I think it's cool to have a live album that shows Sepultura in high spirits, at a high moment in their career, right before the break-up. We were really at that time... in the music, you couldn't see anything wrong. All the problems we were having were outside the shows. So musically it's a fantastic album. There is so much going on in that concert. We are doing like these little jams. There's a little bit of Bad Brains, a little bit of Chico Science; there are all these little things we did between songs that is really cool, and people should definitely hear it. It was a good moment in heavy music." Closes in fetching fashion with the band's legendary, crowd-pleasing cover of Orgasmatron.
Rating 8.5