im sorry but you are incorrect and anyone who actually listened to the band when those albums came out will tell you the same thing. Roots was much more than just an extension of the sound they hinted at on Chaos AD, which still has a bunch of mid-paced thrash scattered throughout. It was the nail in their coffin and everyone(including myself) who purchased that album on day one was left in shock. The additional groove and tribal elements actually worked on Chaos AD. The full on groovy nu-metal on Roots did not. And i wouldnt say they lost their heaviness with that shitstain of an album, but they did lose their metal edge ... which again cannot be said for Chaos AD.
And yes, Max and his wife were the downfall ... but Andreas also embraced the direction they went towards.
I don't think you understood what I meant. Chaos AD was well received back then, I remember. It made some sense to many. The album has energy, it was well produced and the drumming is incredible. BUT... it had no riffs. It lacked riffs the day they recorded it, still lacks them now.
I heard it when it came out. People loved "Territory". I got bored of it around a week after the release. I couldn't believe that, after BTR and Arise, they totally stopped writing riffs in favor of chugging and headbanging rythms. I knew it was the end. Sure, it was metal, but it was groove metal at best, not thrash/death metal songwriting anymore. The novelty wore out really fast.
When Roots came out, the expectation of many were really high, since they said they would expand the tribal elements. Many expected something similar to Chaos AD... I didn't. I knew they would only put something worse. A friend of mine got the album when it was released and I heard it with him. He was almost crying, I just laughed. I didn't expect that, for sure. It was even worse than I imagined.
The difference, I believe, is that I was never that much into Chaos AD unlike many others.
The band embraced the change in style after Arise, They foresaw the dawnfall of thrash and tried to get into the next trend. In Chaos AD they kept some aggression, but they HAD to change to survive, to pay the bills. Most thrash bands did it anyway.
You can say that this is a similar case about Metallica. Load and Reload weren't the problem, they were just logic steps following the success of the black album. Metallica stopped being Metallica with the black album - which is a really good album for what it is - in the same fashion Sepultura stopped being Sepultura with Chaos AD.
so clearly you're not even that familiar with the band but are over here yapping about when they peaked? Lmao ..... ammmmaaayzin
