“Greetings from the third world”, are Max Cavalera’s first words as he starts off spewing this two hour mayhem over the audience of Brixton Academy, London on December 16th, 1996. “Let’s fuck shit up”...

And that is about all he says besides the lyrics of all 28 songs on this stunning doubler. He does not need to say anything more anyway, Sepultura does it for him. For this is by far the most amazing live album I EVER heard, as well as the best Sepultura album there is. Why? Because this is the summit of Sepultura’s work, and it does not seem to get this good anytime in the future.

Why is it the best until now? Because it contains not only about all the songs from the Roots album, but just as much of the earlier work. Sort of a Roots meets the Ultimate Best Of, up to 1996. This date is important, because, as you might have heard already, this album contains the last concert of Sepultura as it used to be, meaning WITH main man Max Cavalera.

I was quite enthousiastic about Soulfly’s latest album 3, just as the live performance at this year’s Dynamo festival was a blast. However, when listening to the album I kept comparing the music with Sepultura, and at the concert Soulfly could not do without playing some of Sepultura’s greatest hits, not surprisingly many from the Roots album. Which is not surprising of course, because that is where Max started from when he started Soulfly. Just as the later Sepultura will always be compared to the old lineup. Split up the team, you split up the success, so in that perspective this HAS to be the best of Sepultura.

But that is not all, because what happens to live recordings only too often is that it gets screwed big time in post-production.

How many times have you listened to an expensive live album which sounds as if it came from a transistor radio? Only too often, I imagine. The only way to get a hint of the feeling you had when you saw your favourite band live, you’d have to crank up your stereo to absurd levels. Not with this baby. Even on the sad little speakers I have connected to my computer, I can almost see them playing right in front of me. Turn it up only a little bit, and there comes the bass drum. Even more and hey, there’s the bass! Of course you can turn this one up to “insane”, and then you can’t help yourself but to stand up in the middle of the room and bang like you never banged before, as if your life depended on it. Now there’s an idea for the next birthday party! I even got the urge to complain about Andreas’ backing vocals on “Ratamahatta”, because they really suck. But then I realized that the song is the penultimate on the setlist, so he actually has some sort of an excuse for being out of breath...

Luckily for my neighbours I also have a CD player in my car. The only downside to that is having to explain to everybody that my suspension is not broken at all, it’s just the music. On the other hand, no one even tried to get close to the car...

So it is that good huh? If you ask me, yes. And what do you know, someone at REZ actually did ask me... I hesitated for a while about the rating I was going to give this, because I normally do not give away tens (the second you do you’ll see you get an album that is even better), but screw that. They will just have to learn to live with a split first place. “Stay tuned, no compromise!”