It’s all big, dumb fun on metal legends Sepultura’s new EP The Cloud Of Unknowing.
Release date: April 24, 2026 | Nuclear Blast | Instagram | Website
It’s probably one of the ballsiest scenes in Hollywood history, and clearly, unequivocally the dumbest. When Dumb and Dumber‘s Harry takes a dump at Mary’s house, a one minute fart-filled shit-stained moment made for cinema explodes onto the scene. But it’s the ‘I hope you’re not using the toilet! It’s broken!‘ tagged at the end of the bit that just pushes it to another level of human angst. All of us have had moments, where we’ve found ourselves having to see a man about a horse in someone’s house, and I don’t mean the kind you ride into town under a setting red sun. All of us have had moments where we find ourselves in situations that couldn’t get worse, but seem to do so. Poor Harry.
Metal can be like this. It can be dumb. And it can be even dumber. And it can be heavy. And it can be heavier. And like the classic Farrelly Brothers film, metal exists in this netherworld, at least to outsiders, that can seem simultaneously dumb, heavy, dumber and heavier. And Sepultura has been making big, dumb, heavy music for close to forty years. Their new EP The Cloud of Unknowing, which should be the last record the band releases before ‘retiring’ after their upcoming tour, is not just a showcase for (relatively) new drummer Greyson Nekrutman, but another entry into the South American metal factory’s vast repertoire.
And lest you think dumb might be a poor choice of words in a literal pantheon of adjectives, Dumb and Dumber is one of my all-time favorite comedies, and Sepultura is certainly up there in terms of its musical analogue. Because whatever pretense one chooses to work under, The Cloud of Unknowing is fun. And in the grand scheme of art, there’s still a lot of room left for making music that’s meant for nothing more than bringing the same joy one gets from laughing at fart jokes.
The record starts off with “All Souls Rising”, a brutally, thrashed-up piece of explosive metal. Derrick Green’s job has never been easy. Replacing founding member Max Cavalera in 1997 wouldn’t be the most simple career move for anybody, much less an unassuming dude from Cleveland, Ohio. But what’s led to Green’s longevity as the project’s singer, is his unrelenting commitment to the sound, and his versatile, aggressive vocal style. On “All Souls Rising”, Green locks in with the band with a snarling, in-your-face performance, the audio equivalent of metal’s ‘vulgar display of power’.
Like most of the band’s recent output, there are creative decisions that are alternately clever and eyebrow raising. At about thirty seconds in, the band drops out and a staccato attack of strings takes over from the band’s violent, blood-spattered grooving. While it staves off the mediocrity of the composition, the song showcases some great guitar work from Andreas Kisser and features a classic Sepultura grind, the indigenous-inspired rhythmic stomp that the Brazilian band has perfected over the past three decades.
On second track, “Beyond the Dream” the band channels the missed grunge opportunities of yesteryear on a piece that sounds like something that ended up on the cutting room floor of an Alice in Chains recording session. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Upon first listen, the song comes across as a bit juvenile in construction. Derrick Green’s vocals mimic the lazy arpeggios of Kisser’s guitar, and the song erupts into a ’90s grunge-pop chorus that seems a bit contrived; but, like a lot of great pop songs, that chorus ends up burrowing itss way into your earholes and the next thing you know, you’re singing it at the top of your lungs in the shower. Big, dumb fun indeed.
Lead single “The Place” is Sepultura at their best. The band is Brazilian through and through, and their most memorable work celebrates this heritage. They’ve always been outspoken supporters for the indigenous people of the country, and do not shy away from speaking truth to power. On “The Place”, the band celebrates the strength of the immigrant and laments the loss of empathy of those who consider themselves ‘natives’. The riff is heavy, sludging its way through dissonant leads and psychedelic meandering, like a lost soul feeling its way through the jungle to cross a border. It’s a haunting treatise on our failure to care anymore, and Sepultura is right there to remind us.
Dumb and Dumber and the seminal album Chaos A.D. were both released within a year of each other. In a way, they both represent genres at the top of their game. In terms of gross-out, stupid comedy that fired on all cylinders and made no excuses for being what it is, Dumb and Dumber is just as classic as the band’s career-changing, genre-pushing record from 1993. The Cloud of Unknowing, while a mere shadow of what the group was doing in its younger years, still shows the occasional mastery of one of the world’s premiere metal bands. And, for that, we should all be thankful.
