Eleven records in, the tribe from Phoenix lit the old fire again. Ritual came out through Nuclear Blast on 19 October 2018, produced, recorded and mixed by Josh Wilbur at Hybrid Studios in Santa Ana between January and June that year, with Max Cavalera's son Zyon behind the kit for the third time, Navajo singers and drummers on two songs, and a groove so heavy it flattens the pit before the first chorus has even arrived. You know this sound. You still want it.
The line-up is lean. Max sings and plays rhythm guitar, and a sitar on the closer. Marc Rizzo plays lead, on what turned out to be his last Soulfly album. Mike Leon plays bass. The guests are well chosen: Randy Blythe on "Dead Behind the Eyes", Ross Dolan of Immolation on "Under Rapture", Max's son Igor Amadeus Cavalera on "Feedback!", and Mark Damon on saxophone in "Soulfly XI".
It's not totally original, but it feels new, for some reason.
Max Cavalera, Metalshop TV, August 2018
He is right on both counts. This record looks back on purpose, to early Soulfly and to the Sepultura of Chaos A.D. and Roots. Nobody is reinventing anything here. But it moves.
The title track opens on chanting and hand percussion, then drops a groove riff on you like a sack of wet cement off a scaffold. That is the whole trick and it works. "Dead Behind the Eyes" brings Blythe in to shout over raw thrash, and the two voices together sound like a fight breaking out in the best way. "Evil Empowered", the first song the band put out ahead of the album, is where Zyon Cavalera, twenty five years old and on his third Soulfly record, stamps the double kick through the floorboards like a pile driver sinking a fence post, and he can do a lot with it.
"Under Rapture" is the darkest corner of the record. Ross Dolan brings the old New York death metal growl from Immolation, and next to Max the two voices sound like they are digging the same hole from opposite ends. It is the song for anybody who thinks Soulfly went soft somewhere along the way. Eliran Kantor painted the cover, and for once the sleeve and the music feel like the same idea.
Nobody is reinventing anything here. But it moves.
The lead guitarist on his last Soulfly album, Marc Rizzo, is the one who keeps hauling the record out of its own ruts: every time a riff starts to feel like one you have heard before, a lead tears in and drags it somewhere else, and he does it on song after song without ever stepping on Max's rhythm. "Demonized" opens on a flamenco acoustic part before it turns heavy, which is pure Rizzo and a nice breath of air. "Feedback!" is a punk party song with a Motörhead kick, built to wake up a room that has stopped paying attention.
Here is what holds it back: an eleventh album built from the band's oldest weapons, by a frontman who had already spent three decades swinging them, rarely swings them anywhere new, and you know where most of these songs are going long before they get there. The tribal side, the thing that made the early records feel like nobody else, shows up loudest at the start and on "Blood on the Street", then mostly gives way to straight groove and thrash. "Soulfly XI", the closing instrumental with sitar and saxophone, splits people. It works as a closing ritual, and there is no point arguing hard with anyone who skips it.
Watch what sells at a merch table after a set like this: the shirt with the cover on it, and whatever goes with the riff from the opener still stuck in people's heads. That is the measure of a record like Ritual. It does not need to change your life. It needs to send you home sore, and it does.
Zyon plays with muscle, not flash, and the whole album rides on his right foot like a truck on its axle. Josh Wilbur's production, recorded and mixed in Santa Ana across the first half of 2018, keeps the whole assault heavy without letting it sink into mud, and it puts the groove first, which is the right call for this music.
Ritual does not break new ground and does not pretend to; what it does is take the oldest tools this band owns, the tribal pulse, the down-tuned groove, the shout, and swing them hard enough to knock the dust off. For anyone raised on Roots that is plenty. For anyone who needs every record to surprise them, this one will not.