In 2005, Soulfly released "Dark Ages", no more tribal nonsense, no more "Jumpdafuckup". This album was straight up thrash metal, it's easily the best thing Cavalera had ever done since "Arise". Filled to the brim with aggressive lyrics, neck breaking tempo's and insane riffs, "Dark Ages" was Cavalera's return to fame, or it would have been, if there was any left to have, because, sadly, thrash metal is a dying genre.

Fact is that most people had already given up on Soulfly after the painfully bad "Primitive". But those brave enough to crawl through the shit-filled collection of utter crap on that particular album, finally got treated with teeny tiny bits of hardcore and thrash on the next two albums, "3" and "Prophecy", with the latter being actually a decent album...

Then, after being spoiled by "Conquer", Soulfly kind of let us down again with "Omen", which was far from being a bad album, but didn't quite live up to the high expectations people had because of it's predecessor. But after people heard "World Scum", the 2nd song on "Enslaved", they couldn't have been more surprised. Was this even Soulfly? After the groovy sound of "Omen", this song basically "skipped" thrash metal, because this song is straight-up death metal, every second of it, it's a crazy song. And with the cooperation of Cattle Decapitation vocalist Travis Ryan, this song couldn't have been much more brutal.

That being said, the inclusion of former Borknagar drummer David Kinkade is probably one of the most adventurous and possibly best choices Max Cavalera has ever made. Thanks to him, Soulfly reached higher levels, Kinkade is insane, his work on this album is awesome, his extreme drumming skills make this album easily Soulfly's best ever.

Because really, this album is fucking great, don't pay too much attention to the cheesy lyrics, remember, we're talking about Cavalera here, a musician who hasn't been capable of producing decent lyrics since "Arise", so i'm not gonna let this slight annoyance be any reason to rate this album lower, because it's simply been this way for 19 years...

This might actually be the first Soulfly album without a weak song, really, there isn't any. Every song is great in its own way, whether it is extreme speed, thrashing riffs or impressive vocals, (although not much) this album has nearly everything a true metal fan could wish for.

I want to dedicate this part to a particular song on this album, namely "Treachery". When I first heard it, my mind was blown, it has to be one the most extreme things Cavalera has ever done, and he hasn't failed a single bit, this song is basically perfect, a strong opening, okay, forget I said strong, I obviously meant fucking insane, never have I heard a Soulfly song this fast, I was absolutely blown away by it. After the intro, the song goes into a more groovy style before ultimately becoming almost a ballad, what's even more surprising, is that this song doesn't even bore a second, because just when you begin to feel the song collapses, it lives up again, in the shape of death metal resulting into a faster part before Kinkade's unleashes all energy left on the outro of the song...

Then, to end it all, the obligatory self-titled outro song of the album, "Soulfly VIII". It's easily the best way to end this album, it's the complete opposite of the rest of the album. But that's not even a problem, I can't explain how it sounds, you just have to find out for yourself, and while you're at it, you might as well listen to the whole album, because it's well worth the time you created for it.

I might be biased, but actually I don't care, I don't dislike the first 4 albums of Soulfly as much as MA does, (not that I like them all too much) and I actually think Soulfly is a pretty great band. I listen to them everyday, and I AM a fan, and I haven't regretted it for a second, with "Enslaved", Cavalera has yet again proven he's still a fine musician. I wasn't even remotely a fan of death metal before this album, I still don't like pure death metal much, but "Enslaved" did make me respect the genre much more, because now, thanks to this album, it's actually listenable for me...