Colin Roberts Photos
The Cavaleras.
On Wednesday night, ex-Sepultura members Max and Igor Cavalera brought their Beneath The Arise tour to New Haven’s legendary rock club Toad’s Place, playing material from two of their former bands’ classic albums.
Sepultura was formed by the brothers in Belo Horizonte, Brazil in 1984 — Max on guitar and vocals, Igor on drums — and the group would go on to become one of the most influential and recognizable heavy metal bands, releasing a handful of highly influential albums fusing thrash and death metal. While Max left the group in 1996 — forming his more nu-metal oriented band Soulfly shortly thereafter — Igor stayed with Sepultura for another decade, reuniting with his brother to play as Cavalera Conspiracy the year after.
The Beneath The Arise tour finds the Cavalera brothers playing the majority of tracks from Beneath The Remains and Arise, released in 1989 and 1991, respectively. The pair of records capture a moment in Sepultura’s career where the band was still on the rise, touring alongside behemoths such as Slayer, Obituary and Sodom. While their peak period of popularity and commercial success came in subsequent years, following the releases of Chaos AD and Roots Bloody Roots, longtime fans and thrash metal purists point to Beneath The Remains and Arise as landmark albums for both the band and the style.
Healing Magic.
As the crowd began to fill in, a two-piece called Healing Magic took the stage. Featuring Max’s son — also named Igor — the duo of just guitar/vocals and drums played an energetic set of groove-oriented songs that landed somewhere between stoner rock and thrash metal. Even without a bass to fill the low end, Healing Magic packed enough punch to sound full and plenty loud. And even though one could find the nepotism in this band opening the show, they were impressive enough to let it go.
Warbringer.
“We’re Warbringer from Los Angeles, California and we came here to crush,” John Kevill, vocalist for the American thrash metal band told the crowd. The five-piece band played a driving set of modern thrash with plenty of nods to the early days of speed metal. Their ripping solos, blistering double kick drum beats and melodic riffs opened up the first pit of the night, the audience responding to Kevill’s pleas to move.
While they didn’t stop to talk much between songs, Warbringer made it known that they were happy to be touring once again after being held up for two-and-a-half years due to Covid. Their latest record, Weapons Of Tomorrow, was released in the early days of the pandemic, making this tour their first opportunity to perform the songs to the audience, who responded positively.
After a long break following Warbringer, the restless audience greeted the Cavalera brothers with a roar. Accompanying the Cavaleras was Daniel Gonzalez of Possessed on lead guitar and Mike Leon of Soulfly on bass. From the opening moments of “Beneath The Remains,” the all-star group ripped through a blazing set, barely taking time to chat between songs. The first half of the set was composed of nearly every track from Beneath The Remains, including fan favorites like “Mass Hypnosis” and “Primitive Future.” The assault of Max’s screamed vocals, Igor’s driving beats and technical guitar riffs got the audience — who were a wide mix of age groups — riled up, opening up a pit and singing along to every word.
“I love that Beneath The Remains record,” Max said as the group took a brief moment to collect themselves before launching into the Arise portion of the set.
As the noisy sample that kicks off the record played, the audience got the pit moving once again, feeding off the band’s energy and getting even rowdier. With a more extreme and experimental edge, the songs from Arise came off even heavier and more intense. During “Altered State,” a song with a more melodic break, Max, along with the crowd, sang the first verse to Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs,” before launching back into the song’s conclusion. The band looked to be having as much fun as the audience, with Leon notably smiling, making faces for pictures and singing along to every song.
After performing most of the songs from Arise, the band closed its set with a cover of Motorhead’s “Orgasmatron,” the song’s more simplistic, melodic sound an odd juxtaposition to the more feral attack of the Sepultura material. But it was back to the thrash as the four-piece took to the stage for their encore, which started with a few minutes of Slayer’s “Raining Blood” before the band launched into “Troops Of Doom,” a song from Sepultura’s 1986 debut Morbid Visions, and ultimately a medley of the title track’s from each of the albums of the featured event.
