"Roots" was a taste of what was to come with Soulfly. It was very in debt to nu-metal at the time.

Split hairs all you want, I feel very confident in placing "Roots" under the nu-metal header.

I mean, were I working at a music store, and a kid came up and said boy he loves early KoRn and is there anything I think he may like, I'd point him to Roots. The songs are just as simplistic & they abuse the same loud/soft dynamic that makes KoRn so appealing.

I think that the first Soulfly album was more of the direction that Sepultura would have gone in had Max not left. As I said, already hinted towards that sound on "Roots"... if anything the first Soulfly album was what Max had in mind musically.

They were started to morph into something else... Chaos AD was the first step, though it retained more of the thrash sound that made Sepultura great.. I also enjoy the tribal elements of that album. Not as great as "Arise" or "Beneath the Remains" but still enjoyable in it's own way.

"Roots" dropped the thrash elements, added more Groove and was more in debt to Nu-Metal (call it Alternative Metal if you will). Even featured Johnathon Davis and production by Ross Robinson, who was the go to guy for Nu-Metal at the time.

So I think it is safe to say that Max's head was going in the Nu-Metal direction and would see it happen with Soulfly, but he would have still made the same album with Sepultura.

Soulfly would drop the nu-metal and do something better later on that was better than anything Sepultura had done since Max's departure.

You two derserve to be hung, drawn and quartered and then having your balls cut off and fed to the ducks for saying such blasphemous stuff. No one calls my favourite heavy metal album Roots Nu Fuuuucking Metal......this is a groove metal monster AND NOT NU METAL.

It was a mix of different styles, but there was a nu-metal influence throughout it all.

There is only one way left to deal with you now and thats with the IRON MAIDEN

I'm going to advance a radical theory: one can not only like an album from an unpopular subgenre, said album can even be one's favorite. Why let others opinion of the subgenre define not only your tastes, but your classification? To use my earlier example, if one worked at a record store, and a person came in and talked about how they loved early Korn and wanted something similar but just as brilliant, "Roots" would be a great recommendation. Whereas, in the same scenario, if someone came in proclaimed their love for "Cowboys From Hell", "Roots" would not be the album I'd recommend.

There is nothing radical there, just simple logic really. Its really no different from somebody going into a music store saying how much they love death metal and the store attendent recommending a a Slayer record to them, instead of recommending a Metallica record.

There is a simple genre tracer line here: Thrash= Groove= Nu Metal.

Each one derives from the other but the genres are different. Some of the thrash bands such as Overkill added groove elements once that genre had taken off with Pantera, but Sepultura were the only really big band who jumped ship from thrash metal to groove metal on Chaos AD, but they never jumped ship to Nu Metal, the only well known groove metal band that jumped ship to Nu Metal were Machine Head for a couple of albums. The only link that Sepultura has to Nu Metal, is that they were the most influential of all groove metal bands on that genre. Their savage ethnic influenced style of groove was a huge influence of Korn but thats about it, groove and Nu Metal are cousins, as thrash and groove are cousins. Iron Maiden were a huge influence on thrash, but I see no valid reason to lump them under the thrash banner.

One would think the unique world music genre blending found on Roots would be lost on the likes of a KoRn fanatic :D

Nu-metal or not, it's a damn good record and certainly didn't sound like anything else at the time.