ALBUM REVIEW: Go Ahead And Die – Go Ahead And Die
If there was ever a heavy metal hall of fame, there’s only a handful of candidates truly worthy of the holy grail. Played a pivotal part in pioneering an entire genre, not once, but twice? Sure. Started up not one, but two, supergroups consistently firing on all cylinders? Why not. Nurtured your roots and raised a family of heavy metal heroes hellbent for a slice of the pie you’ve had for decades? Easy. If extreme metal icon Max Cavalera (KILLER BE KILLED, SOULFLY, ex-SEPULTURA) hasn’t come to mind, here’s another reason why he’s destined for the heavy metal hall of fame: GO AHEAD AND DIE.
Billed as the boredom-busting brainchild of his youngest heir, Igor Cavalera; GO AHEAD AND DIE does away with his father’s lifelong devotion to groove metal. Instead, the trio, completed by KHEMMIS and BLACK CURSE drummer Zach Coleman take a trip through a dark, dirty and dissonant wormhole of crust punk, death metal, and grindcore. Rather than rip up the rulebook, they rob it of it’s best plays and take them to town on their self-titled debut album. Across it’s 45-minute runtime, they deliver a modern update that sounds as monstrously heavy and hard-hitting as the likes of ANTI-CLIMEX, ENTOMBED and NAPALM DEATH.
Opener Truckload Full Of Bodies is as close as you’ll come to being sucked into a tornado, it’s sledgehammer-riffs and bludgeoning blast beats opening holes in your head. It’s old-school death metal down to the bone, and it’s all the better for it. Follow up’s Toxic Freedom and I.C.E. Cage move in the same direction, melding Left Hand Path-era ENTOMBED with crushing slabs of crust-punk.
If GO AHEAD AND DIE was simply eleven tracks of old-school crust punk and death metal, they’d be giving the scene stalwarts a run for their money. However, the Cavalera’s are not a family known for settling for second best, so it’s no surprise that they pull no punches in pushing the boundaries and blurring the lines of the genres they’re colouring in to deliver a modern classic.
Their calling card lies in a trio of mid-album masterclasses that can only be described as the aural equivalent of a rollercoaster ride: it should probably come with a health warning, but you wanna do it all over again. Isolated Desolated is a desert of crust-punk corpses doing battle with death metal druids, as if CARCASS and NAPALM DEATH went to war. Prophets Prey is the sound of SLAYER throttling slabs of thrash metal down your throat whilst DISCHARGE slaps you in the face. Punisher proves why Coleman is one of heavy metal’s most underrated drummers as a barrage of blastbeat bullets tear through the cavity of your chest across a track that tapes over their sound with cut-outs from news readers – if you’ve ever wondered what an extreme metal edition of PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING would sound like, here it is.
Whilst GO AHEAD AND DIE deliver an aural assault on your eardrums for 45 minutes straight, they meld their metal with a socio-political commentary where nothing and no-one is safe. Whether it’s the global pandemic that’s imprisoned us, corrupt cops and polarising politicians, or religious zealots, Max and Igor’s lyrical laments are simple and straight-forward to grasp, yet lodge themselves in the labyrinth of your memory like earworms. Toxic Freedom’s intensive and introspecting take on social inequality evokes the frustration an entire world is feeling in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, as they growl emphatically: “hiding in the dark, racist fucking lies you don’t want the world to find; terminating lives, human genocide, uniformed devils, society’s demise.”
GO AHEAD AND DIE isn’t so much a reinvention of the wheel as it is a homage to its roots and a hint at where it’s going. It is once again a reminder of the legacy Max Cavalera has made for himself since 1984, and an introduction to Igor Cavalera who has clearly inherited his father’s penchant for painting pulverising walls of noise. If GO AHEAD AND DIE isn’t causing chaos at the top of your album of the year list, you’re just not listening.
Rating: 9/10
Go Ahead And Die is set for release on June 11th via Nuclear Blast Records.
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