Father of the year, in both 2021 and 1986

Let’s compare two different family dynamics. Case #1: Offspring spends inordinate amounts of time cranking/playing along to Discharge, Hellhammer, Possessed, Broken Bones, Napalm Death and GISM. Family patriarch hears this and says, “Damn, let’s form a band, write and record an album, and have our ultimate father-son project propped up by your mom brokering us a deal with Nuclear Blast!” Case #2: Offspring does the same. Family patriarch hears this and, after/during necking a bottle of Johnnie Walker, screams, “Turn that shit off, you uncool faggot” (a direct quote, by the way!) before administering a beating with a reinforced leather strap as mom blathers on in the background about her Satanic sprog.

I’ll let you decide which came from the household led by Max Cavalera and which was a snapshot from my youth, though it’s not hard to figure out seeing as I haven’t just released my debut album under the Go Ahead and Die banner. Igor Cavalera (Max’s youngest son) has, however, leading his pops and Khemmis/Black Curse drummer Zach Coleman through a morass of power chords buzzing like obese bumblebees, a drum sound that’s hopefully tagged as “Bruce Day” on the sound grid and a sensibility acknowledging that we really should be worrying about inhaling slag runoff, volcanic dust, musty humidity and practice space black mold, not COVID. No vaccines necessary; just the willingness to surrender to the filthy tritone warble of “Toxic Freedom,” skirt along the edge of punk madness with “I.C.E. Cage” and accept that decrying societal ills while running Schizophrenia and Morbid Tales through a dirt bath on “Punisher” is a good thing.

Old-school heads may encounter bits of tedium rooted in familiarity during the album’s second half, but any negativity that Go Ahead and Die generates should be mitigated by the thought of thrusting this actual pro-familial, anti-injustice project before moralistic Focus on the Family asshats and watching their conservative rationalizations crumble.

Review taken from the July 2021 issue of Decibel, which is available here.