Chaos A.D. by Sepultura

Chaos A.D., Sepultura's fifth studio album, came out on Roadrunner in 1993, with Epic handling it in North America, and it's the sound of the Belo Horizonte band tearing up its own rulebook. Andy Wallace produced, with sessions at Rockfield Studios and Chepstow Castle, and the band pushed the experiments of Arise further still, trading thrash velocity for thick, stomping groove metal. It's the first Sepultura record with Paulo Jr. playing bass in the studio, having only played it live since 1984, and it even makes room for the band's first fully acoustic song.

Max Cavalera barks like a man with a grievance, his brother Igor's drums hit like a riot squad, Andreas Kisser's riffs grind and chug, and "Refuse/Resist" plays like a call to arms. It climbed to 32 on the Billboard 200, the band's best showing yet and the first top 40 album Roadrunner ever had, and it's now held up as one of Sepultura's best.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.