Come on now, honestly. Is anyone really surprised to see the Cavalera brothers back together again, especially after Iggor left Sepultura in 2006? Ever since Max flounced away from the band that made him a star, the one question on everyone’s thoughts has been – when will he return? When will the Arise line-up get back together and produce something as good as that masterpiece and the two albums before it? It’s what is to blame for Sepultura’s perfectly respectable (if unThrashy) post-Max output being generally ignored, for Soulfly being dismissed out of hand, for most not even having heard of Nailbomb. When will things be as they were? Metalheads cherish tradition, after all, and nothing speaks of tradition better than a bunch of longhaired Brazilians making Thrash Metal.

Well, anyone with any intelligence should be expecting Cavalera Conspiracy’s first album (and what a crap name, for a start!) to be both of two things. Firstly, it’s not going to be as good as Schizophrenia, Beneath The Remains or Arise. The chances of it being better than even Chaos AD are pretty slim, and there’s little point in wondering whether the experiments of Roots will be taken here. Secondly, it’s going to sound like recent Soulfly. Max is hardly going to take a far step away from the Thrashy sound that he’s got going at the moment, especially since Thrash and the old school are ‘in’ at the moment. However excited you are about the Cavaleras being back together, and the step closer to a Sepultura reunion (which Andreas Kisser would be a fool not to do financially, however disappointing the results would inevitably be musically) you have to admit that Inflikted isn’t going to be a masterpiece. It’s a stopgap, a tease, a vanity project, if you will.

Bearing that in mind, Inflikted isn’t as much of a disappointment as it would have been if you had gone in hoping for all that the hype promised. This is the modern version of Thrashy Death Metal, Max’s unmistakable voice spewing forth over fast riffing, the odd tribal drumbeat or acoustic strum breaking things up. The opening title track is a blinder, Soulflyian guitars shrieking before the Thrash riffs kick in, ripping and grooving their way down your spine. Max’s guitarwork is as ever, perfectly adequate – he’ll never be a Mustaine or a Hammett, but few others can crank out the rhythm guitar riffs like he can. Iggor is a solid drummer, there’s no doubt about it, and he beats the drums as if they’ve insulted his mother throughout the album. Hired hands Marc Rizzo (Soulfly) and Joe Duplantier (Gojira) do a fine job on guitar and bass respectively, even if it is a bit hard to hear the latter’s contribution.

The album barely puts a foot wrong throughout. Sanctuary is slightly more Beneath The Remainsy with a great bit of soloing, Terrorize opens with some of Iggor’s signature tribal work (why didn’t he just join Soulfly?) Dark Ark has lots of melodic leadwork and some fairly respectable growling from Max… and so on. The only sore point throughout was The Doom Of All Fires, which reminded me uncomfortably of that dreadful ‘the roof is on fire’ song by Coal Chamber. Otherwise, even though Max still writes lyrics such as ‘inflicted! Show no mercy, motherfucking wicked’ when he must be old enough by now to father the vast majority of people reading this, there’s still enough ink in his pen to make a solid Metal album, and if that’s all you go in expecting then you won’t regret it.